


Better Than Nothing

by Osidiano



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, False Memories, Flashbacks, Mechaphilia, Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories Fusion, Past Child Abuse, Politics, Post-Endless Waltz, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Religious Fanaticism, Slurs, Terrorism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2008-02-15
Updated: 2008-02-15
Packaged: 2018-04-13 05:23:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 29,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4509471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Osidiano/pseuds/Osidiano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place roughly 5 years after Endless Waltz. They may not be heroes anymore, but as the colonies' last line of defense against a bright and idealistic new terrorist, the five Gundam pilots will have to prove that they are better than nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Still Nothing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I first started writing this fic _when I was in junior high_ , y'all, and was partially rewritten in 2008. I've been off and on with this bad boy through college, and it is pretty low on my priority list. I do eventually plan on finishing it, but it will probably be very different when I finally do.

" _We start, then, with nothing, pure Zero. But this is not the nothing of negation. For not means other than, and other is merely a synonym of the ordinal numeral second. As such it implies a first; while the present pure Zero is prior to every first. The nothing of negation is the nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything. But this pure Zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility—boundless possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom._ "— a pause in the reading, smoky brown eyes sweeping downward to read the name, origin, and date at the bottom —" _Charles S. Peirce_ , Logic of Events, 1898 A.D.. . ."

He laughed, cold and without voice, a soundless movement of the mouth. His full, bottom heavy lips twitched up into a spasmodic smile, and the young man set aside the paper. "Amazing, this being. . . To think that such a redundant, though remarkably gifted, man could have grasped this almost Holy Truth. . .ha. And in such a time when man itself was only beginning to breathe, to reach higher, to condemn its own laws and strive to find what lies beyond the knowledge that they were first given? One might cry out blasphemy. But I am, unfortunately, forced to ponder the implementations of this: for, if a man, a human entity born of flesh and blood, and with a purely human mind, could take hold of knowledge that few of my own Creators have begun to realize, what does this say of them? Does this forsake their godhood, proof against their divinity?"

"Hn. I think not. Perhaps it implies that while small things may captivate small minds, those very same 'small minds' may come to take unto themselves a higher understanding; for instance, one which a God may not have taken due to trivial matters that wish to block this Truth, instead. For, if this were not the case, an omnipotent entity, made from a Holy material by mortal and mindless hands, would contradict its own existence, thereby destroying itself in the very moment that it was first conceived. That then would cease the existence before it ever had a chance to be, leaving one with an unquestionable answer that could never be proven. Or asked, for that matter," he sighed then, flicking aside an immaculately stacked set of tabloid articles, pictures devoid of eyes coming loose and floating downward from the edge of the metal desk where they joined the black grease pen that had fallen earlier.

"I have too much time on my hands, don't I. . .?" fingers brushed over hiragana that had been scratched into the steel surface, more of his strange, religious ramblings scrawled across the desktop in his uneven handwriting. The familiar musings had long ago burned scars into his mind, and now they rested there peacefully, deep indentations like inverted Braille that he was loathe to disturb. When he touched those holy passages, it made his skin burn and blood boil, like the power of the Almighty was rushing through him. He pulled away before he lost himself in reverie, turning in the swivel chair just as the hinges on the knob-less door to his room squeaked in protest. His eyes widened and his naturally dark skin went pale as it opened, his breath catching in his throat at the sight of the new arrival.

An old man stood in the door way, one gleaming and synthetic hand clutching what seemed to be a simple and innocuous wooden cane, had he not known better. He had too often felt that cane across his back and chest to think of it as harmless. The old man's other hand—a three-pronged claw that clicked together as if possessed by a life of its own—was held up, the sleeve of his white lab coat falling to expose the wiring to the elbow where it then shadowed too deeply for him to tell what resided there. Sometimes, he would wonder if the old man even had an arm there, or if it was all those harsh and ugly metal fixtures. Had the old man ever been fully human? His head dropped, brown bangs hiding his face from view as he tried to regain control of his expression. A lack of control was considered a weakness, and weaknesses were dealt with by force. Through the hang of his hair, he watched the old man shuffle into the room, his thick and heavy prosthetic legs moving slowly, dragging with each step as though he had a bad limp.

"You probably do," he heard the old man murmuring, the comment coupled with the ever-present clicking of the claw-hand and the faint grating of the legs on the white concrete floor. "Though I had hoped that you were trying to do something more productive, _Zero-zero_." The old man laughed after that, his voice raspy and coarse, rattling like loose shrapnel in the reworked cartilage of his damaged trachea. The metal claw came to rest lightly on the young man's head, 'fingers' tangling in the unkempt hair. Perhaps it was meant to be a reassuring gesture, but the young man had to hold back a shudder at the cold and impersonal feeling of it.

He was afraid, and had always been afraid, of this old man, this great and powerful Creator who had shaped the only world that he had ever known. The young man was awestruck, and trembled at the possibility of the God's wrath. Had he done something wrong? He could not remember the results of the last test and had lost count of the number of failures and successes he had had during training this month. The great Creator never came to see him anymore—at least, not since the Accident—so he had given up on keeping track of his progress or recording his transgressions.

Creator liked the New Version, Zero-one, better, anyway.

"Oh, don't worry, Zero-zero. I'm not mad at you," Creator said, pulling his 'hand' back slowly. Zero-zero swallowed hard, squeezing his eyes closed. Would Creator be angry to know how scared he was right now? He knew that he should not have been feeling fear, and that fear was a sign of weakness, a mistake in his careful programming. They all tried so hard to delete that useless humanity from his system, but it always seemed to creep back in and to hold onto some delicate backup data processing unit with a desperate tenacity. He often wondered if anyone else in the facilities ever experienced these strange and uncontrollable waves of emotion, but all the stoic men in their pristine white lab coats remained untouched. Their faces were masks of resolution, their eyes clouded by reason or hidden behind tinted glass and protective goggles.

The old man turned away, the grating sound becoming the only way for the young man to know Creator's movement. Creator stopped by the knob-less door, said his full designation— _"Subject XXG-ZSP-00"_ —softly, and watched him rise to his feet with his head still down. Zero-zero followed him out of the door and into the white hall where it was sterile and clean, the faint scent of disinfectant still clinging to the walls. He was only vaguely familiar with this outside world, the area beyond his room and the hallway leading to the training simulators and infirmary seemed more like legend than reality. Of course, a part of him knew that the facilities he had grown up and spent the majority of his lifetime in were only a few relatively small buildings on a far larger colony, that colony being only one out of the cluster that made up L-1. There were hundreds of thousands of people populating it: living, breathing, dying people who worked hard jobs and liked to keep their weather system operating the same way every year, so that it rained just often enough to appreciate the warm spring and snowed each winter. Maybe it reminded them of an Earth they had never seen or of countries that they only vaguely knew from history textbooks.

Zero-zero wiped his sweaty palms off on his jeans as he followed Creator down the long hall, shaking his head a little as if to clear of idle nonsense. Now was not the time to let his mind wander and thoughts draw lazy, speculative circles. Surely, if Creator had come for him again after all these years, it must mean something. Perhaps Zero-one had failed, and he was being chosen to complete the mission instead. He had always hoped that they would return to him, the Prototype, the Beta Version with his twitches and jitters and miniscule glitches. This could be the answer to all his prayers.

Then again, there was one other option. Creator could have prepared a bed in the infirmary, if that was where they were headed. Zero-zero would be strapped down by old, worn leather bindings, a swatch of thick gauze shoved into his mouth while a doctor shoved a clear syringe into his superior venacava. It would not be long before the sweet nothingness of death washed over him and he was terminated. They would dispose of the body he left behind, and no one would ever know of or mourn his passing. He would fade from existence as if he had never been, and yet he had been denied the blessing of True Nothing—the sanctuary of pure Zero—by the simple act of his birth.

It did not seem fair that he would go so quietly and meekly into the void without first having expelled the passion God had gifted him with, but if that was his destiny, then so be it. Zero-zero clenched his fists and lifted his head to stare resolutely at the hunched spot between Creator's shoulders. No matter how frightening the mission may have seemed or how much it went against his fragile mortal instincts, if he was ordered to die then that was what he was going to do.

He imagined that it was the one thing he could not fail to accomplish.


	2. Expect Nothing

Heero shivered, though not from the biting cold that crept through his clothes and nestled close to bone. His breath came out shaky, white clouds escaping his partially opened mouth as he stood there, eyes uplifted to the artificial sky. He was nervous, filled with a childish terror of what would not, of what could not, come. It made his lips tremble, his stomach flutter with the fluctuations in his breathing, and his hands twitch. After spending a moment longer like that, he turned, eyes closing as he fumbled for the pack of cigarettes in the pocket of his button down work shirt. He managed to take one out, dropping another to the snow covered ground in his haste. The cigarette remained unlit though, and his teeth clamped down on the filtered end angrily. The lighter—one of those windproof black cylinders that felt oh-so-much like the trigger mechanisms he used during the war—had been left at home in the kitchen of his run-down, southern slums apartment. He picked a hell of a day to quit smoking. . .

He opened his eyes again, rubbing his too-smooth hands together in an attempt to create some warmth as his gaze roamed to the right, and his breathing hitched, then stopped and was held. The old facility was over there, only an odd dozen yards away. It laid there, an intimidating fortress from a half-remembered nightmare to him, and he shied away. He did not know why he had come here, to this hellish place with its awful, screaming memories of things that he was not supposed to think about anymore. It was the anniversary of the Accident; that horrible, horrible mistake that he had made oh-so-very long ago. But he did not _want_ to be here, did not _like_ coming here every damn year to stand—petrified and pained—in this frigid stretch of once-flowered field. He wanted to go home, to run away from this past again. And again. And again.

But Heero could not, and he knew that he could not. Because. . .because it was against the rules, it was something that he should not do. It was something that he just _could_ _not_ do. And no matter how much it hurt him to come back here, to the morning of the Accident, he would do it. Because he deserved it, for all that he had done. And She. . . She deserved it, too. She deserved to see this, this emotional turmoil that She brought on with every waking moment, with every forced beat of his heart. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he headed back through the field the way that he had arrived.

He picked up speed as he went until he was running, just as he had run from that place last year. And the year before that, and the year before that. He ran as though the wolves of hell were biting at his heels, and perhaps they were, in a way. Perhaps they had risen up from the ground after him, for he could hear them growling and screaming in his ears; snarling howls of victory falling from bloodstained jaws. That mindless terror swept through him, leaving him feeling weak and breathless, a child lost in too much darkness. So he ran. And he ran. And he ran, but he could not get away. Not from it, and not from the past. Not from Her. She was following. Following following always following just behind so that if he turned back. . .

But Heero ran on, pushing past the people of the colony who got in his way, not bothering to stop when they fell to the ground. He could not stop, just like he could not say he was sorry. . .

A screech of tires along pavement, someone slamming on their brakes as their vehicle swerved to miss hitting him, and the stench of break fluid came to him. He stumbled, staring, momentarily blinded as the car slid on black ice towards him. The driver screamed, and Heero scrambled out of the way, blocking out the hateful curses directed at him.

And he ran.

* * *

 

**BlueFaery: ZSP-OF1**   
**Error. Access Denied.**   
**BlueFairy: ZSP-OF1**   
**Error. Access Denied.**

"Oh come  _on_. . ."

**BlueFaerie: ZSP-OF1  
Password Confirmed.**

A flicker of blue across the monitor, followed by a short-lived hum from the hard drive, and the screen shuddered, returning to start up.

"Son of a  _bitch_. . ." he rubbed his hands anxiously before setting his fingers down lightly on the keyboard to continue.

 **Geppeto: ZSP-OF1**  
**Error. Access Denied.**  
 **Gepeto: ZSP-OF1**  
 **Error. Access Denied.**

"You  _asshole_. . ." he paused, gently tapping the desk as he thought. "Maybe. . .?"

**WoodenPuppet: ZSP-OF1  
Password Confirmed.**

**Accessing ' ZSP ' Files:**  
**00010 -**  
 **01001 -**  
 **00111 -**  
 **00001 -**

**Hello, Professor.**

"Thank  _God_. . ." were the murmured words, more exhalation than anything else. Glancing back over his shoulder to the partially opened door, Zero-zero slipped his zip disk into the drive. Three clicks—that was all it would take for him to have a copy of each and every one of the files shown. Carefully, he tugged his laptop out of his bag, opening it as he waited. These files would need to be checked for contamination before he uploaded the virus and left. He looked back to the door once more, listening.

There was nothing.

A sigh and he flicked the 'on' switch of his laptop, popping the disk out of the older computer and replacing it with another. Slowly, with that reverent deliberance that he always used in contact with God, Zero-zero opened the files, a soft smile playing on his bottom-heavy lips. Oh yes, this was it. . . He snapped the laptop shut, canceled the running program on the other computer, and instead opened the zip drive. This Creator, the most merciful of the Three that he still acknowledged, would have a nasty surprise when he tried to turn on hi—

Blinking, Zero-zero looked up, back over his shoulder to the door. There was a noise coming from down the hall. Footsteps; the sound of someone waking up. He cursed under his breath.

Reluctantly, he took his disk from the drive, hopping up onto the desk and pushing his bag through the small opening that led out into the crawl space between the two layers of the ceiling. Though this Creator had been smart enough  _not_  to have ventilation shafts large enough for a human being to move through, he had not thought about how much room there was between the heavy plaster of the visible ceiling and the wooden foundation above it. Once Zero-zero had ripped out the warm rose padding, it had been relatively easy. Unfortunately, if this Creator came into the room, he would not be able to move—what with the groaning of the plaster beneath his weight and the fact that in some places it actually sagged and flakedwhen he passed over it. With a grunt, he hauled himself up after his bag, squirming slightly to get in, grumbling as he did so:

" _Risk everything, or gain nothing_? Hmph; Geoffrey de Charny was an incompetent  _ass_. . ."


	3. See Nothing

"Your strength is admirable, Miss Peacecraft, but I'm afraid that my voice alone is not enough to inspire the frustrated masses to lay down their weapons and accept God's will," the man on the other end of the line spoke easily, his fluent English heavily tainted by an L1 cluster accent. Relena had recognized the colony dialect almost immediately, knew with certainty where the young man hailed from. If only she could see his face. . .but even though he had opened a video channel, he remained disguised. He wore a ragged dark blue baseball cap that he played with often; tugging at the stiff brim to ensure that it was low enough to shadow his eyes from view. The rest of his face was covered by an unmarked black bandanna, wrapped around his head and tied in the back. Not even the color of his skin was discernable now. "My enemy _cannot be convinced or shamed, only terrorized and crushed_."

Relena raised a brow questioningly, a small frown pulling at the corners of her mouth at the quotation. It sounded odd, coming from this young man, though she could not quite put her finger on why. Perhaps it had to do with the line's original context.

"You're a Communist?" she ventured doubtfully, an uneasy feeling growing in low in her stomach. She did not know this man, did not know how he had gotten her personal number or why the transmission could not be traced. There was a slight delay between the visual and audio input on his end, and so she assumed that he must have been transmitting the signal from somewhere in the colonies. Perhaps L1, since that was obviously his home. She did not know why he would not call her by her proper last name—Darlian—even though she had reminded him of it at least three times now. Still, she could not shake the feeling that there was something very familiar, and very wrong with him. Truthfully, Relena did not like talking to him. He had a slick way of speaking, a smooth and oily kind of affection in the tone of his voice. It was not directed at her, but at something else, something less tangible. A far-off goal or lofty ideal, perhaps. It made her skin crawl with apprehension. The man on the other end of the line chuckled at her questioning remark, shaking his head somewhat ruefully.

"No, no, of course not, although I do reserve a great deal of respect for Trotsky's brilliance. I believe that equality is something that only God can grant us once we arrive in His holy kingdom. In mankind's system, where each individual is caught up in his own personal struggle for material wealth and power, everything revolves around the concept of victory. _Victory breeds hatred. Only he who has given up both victory and defeat can be truly contented and happy_."

"It doesn't have to be that way," Relena assured the man, her brows knit delicately as her expression took on a hopeful, beseeching air. This time, she did not recognize his quote, and so she assumed that it was safe to say that it was not from a European thinker. "I believe that there is a way for us to live without being used by those with greater power, and without wronging those who are less fortunate than ourselves. Equality and peace are not just dreams. We can reach these goals through pacifistic and legal means—"

"Perhaps you can, Miss Peacecraft, but _the taint worse than all taints is named ignorance,_ " the man interrupted her with his idle musings, spoken softly into the off-screen speaker. She watched his hand come up to toy with the top of the bandanna, perhaps checking to make sure that it was secure across the bridge of his nose. The hand was dark; a swarthy complexion intermixed with drops of paler scar tissue. It reminded her, very briefly, of the back of Duo's hands; those scattered scars that the former Gundam pilot had laughed off after explaining that he did not always wear gloves while welding. Hot sparks would land on skin, and burn deep, scarring if not immediately attended to. The hand dropped then, and Relena shook the similarity from her mind. She needed to stay focused. "You have an amazing gift, you know. Your persuasion, your voice and beauty make for a dangerous political adversary. It saddens me that you did not stay as Queen of Earth, nor did you utilize the full power of that position when you held it."

"I appreciate your faith in me, but that position should never have been legally sanctioned."

"I suppose not. . ." the young man trailed off, head turning slightly as though he was regarding something off to one side. It was hard to tell, since she could not see his eyes to follow his line of sight. He touched something just above and to the right of the camera, and Relena heard a several soft beeps and a gently mechanical whirr. Were those gears moving? She wished she knew where he was. The young man was seated, for sure, in some kind of high-backed chair, the headrest of which was curved and came forward at the sides. It looked suspiciously like a pilot's seat; was he transmitting from a shuttle? That might explain some of the difficulty in locating the source, but still. . .Relena glanced back to the door of her home office, checking to see if any of her staff had returned with good news. No such luck. "But tell me, Miss Peacecraft, is the Sanc kingdom still a haven for the innocent? Do the lost still gather at your doorstep, begging for your mercy?"

"So long as the Sanc kingdom exists, it will remain a sanctuary for those who have nowhere else to go," Relena answered with a smile as she returned her attention to the screen in front of her, curious as to where this line of questioning would lead. "No individual is turned away, regardless of the circumstances surrounding their arrival. May I ask why?"

He was silent on the other end of the line for a long moment, tinkering with something that Relena could not see. There was a warning light flashing above the camera, sending flashes of red across the young man's hat and bandanna. Why was it that she was assuming that he was a young man, anyway? It must have been the way that he spoke; the bizarrely childish enthusiasm that snuck into his tone every so often. He sounded a lot like the young radicals that Wufei spent time with; spoke with the same cultured air as the new-age revolutionaries scattered throughout the countries and colonies, each with their own agenda and half-formed plan for reformation. The man on the other end of the line was probably older than her—no, _definitely_ older, but still not old enough to have set aside his idealism and political naivety in favor of something less inspiring and far more grounded.

". . . _My true desire is to relieve others of their pain though I myself may fall into Hell_ ," he replied cryptically, his hands coming back to rest on his lap, or perhaps a keyboard that was located below the camera's rectangular field of view. Relena puzzled at this strange statement, hoping that he would elaborate if she said nothing. Another pause, and he continued. "A wise man by the name of Bassui said that once, and I believe that it is true for me as well. Miss Peacecraft, I want death and violence to be a thing of the past; I have dreamt of an era where the drums of war have finally been silenced for all of eternity. It is my true desire. . .no, it is my holy mission, to embark on a quest that will end with all of God's kingdom at peace."

"That sounds like a beautiful goal."

"It is," he must have been smiling beneath that bandanna, because his voice was breathy and delighted. His eyes must have been wide and gleaming with excitement beneath the brim of his hat, because he was leaning forward and had clasped his hands together. He was starting to sound like a child again; a slightly fanatic and wonderfully educated child, but a child none the less. "But for our peace to be born into these brutal times, into this vicious reality, you have to understand, Miss Peacecraft—"

"Oh no. . ."

"That this era of humanity's undignified scrabbling calls for sometimes unforgivable measures. Pacifism cannot change the current status quo; throughout history, it has been shown to us that only violence can bring about a new world order. We must be prepared to fight, and shed blood in the name of peace. _The only way to win is to brutalize the enemy and force him to accept your terms_."

Relena shook her head with a sigh, bringing a hand up to her face to rub at one temple in dismay. But of course he was a violent radical bent on war in order to bring about peace. It seemed like everyone who tried to contact her and talk had the same political motive now. She was not Queen of Earth, but if she chose to place her vote behind any official or movement, it would surely pass. It had nothing to do with modesty or vanity; Relena knew that the people of Earth viewed her as iconic symbol, and that many believed her to be the voice of the reason, regardless of the words she chose to use. People would follow her blindly, if she asked; they would rally behind her without ever truly understanding the philosophy or ideal that drove the movement.

"The world does not need another bloody revolution. Non-violent means can be used to bring about change."

"We must force our opposition up against the wall, Miss Peacecraft. We must let our response to dissenters be to _shoot and threaten to shoot_ —"

"More quotations from famous thinkers of the radical left?" she countered with a glare, her annoyance starting to show in her tone and volume. Relena sighed again, shaking her head more vehemently this time. "If this is all that you have to say, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to end this conversation."

The young man lapsed into silence again, his head lowered as though thinking hard about this new ultimatum. At some length, he began again, slowly, his fanaticism calmed and held back once more.

"Not just 'thinkers,' Miss Peacecraft. These intellectuals were men of action as well as words. They were movers and shakers of their times," he took a deep breath, gesturing vaguely in the air in front of him with both hands. The young man seemed to be struggling to find the words needed to convey his meaning. "In a sense, I called you because I want your help—"

"I will offer no help or sympathy for those who advocate violence."

"No, no, of course not!" he quickly assured her, raising his head for just a moment before ducking it back down. In that instant, she saw his eyes; slanted, Japanese, dark brown. But then they were gone again, hidden beneath the low brim of his hat. Relena said nothing, waiting for him to explain. "But, you see, you are beloved by God; the Almighty Lord sees in you the hope of humanity. He is moved by your faith and cherishes your goodwill. I only wanted to know that the Sanc kingdom remains a refuge for those who are not yet meant to be judged by God."

". . .Just who, and what, exactly are you?"

"In time, you will understand. But for now, know that I will send all those who are deemed innocent in the eyes of God to you for protection. Be ready for a vast immigration from the colonies, for the innocent and the lost to show up on your doorstep as though it were the entrance to the Promised Lands," his voice was rapturous, and he opened his arms as if to remind her that his mission was for the sake of peace and that these pilgrims would arrive unarmed. Relena stared, lips parted ever so slightly in shock. "Unto Tahtinen once said that there were only two ways to avoid war: _one is to satisfy everyone's desire, the other, to content oneself with the good_ , but I believe that there is a third way. A way that, unlike the two he mentioned, will—without a doubt—utterly annihilate mankind's craving for war."

"Wh-what—?"

"That's right, Miss Peacecraft," he whispered into the microphone, leaning forward towards the camera with rising zealotry in his low tone. "I am going break the warrior spirit. I am going to destroy all those with the appetite for violence; I will invoke a reign of terror like none the world has ever seen, and every voice that cries out for vengeance and retaliation will be cut short and drowned in the blood of their brethren."

The line was cut abruptly, his image snapping out into white static.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The unsourced quotes used in this chapter are from Dhammapada and Lenin.


	4. Meet Nothing

" _There's much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it_. A very smart woman by the name of Diana Trilling said that, you know. She lived from about 1905 to 1996. _Amano Domini_ , of course, so you wouldn't have known her," Zero-zero was rambling again, fingers laced together on the back of his neck. He was smiling, eyes half-closed as he tilted his head up and slightly to the left. It was odd, the way that he seemed so childishly happy, even though his female companion had stopped listening to him long ago.

"Oh, come on, Miss Remmi; you have to admit that it's true. Our species—in general, as I'm sure that there _are_ exceptions _somewhere_ —is lazy and self-absorbed; which is interesting, seeing as how, at the same time, we simply cannot be bothered to mind our own damn business. We always want to butt into our neighbor's affairs and tell him the proper way to run his life, his government, and how to follow his own religion. Then again, concepts like _freedom_ and _patriotism_ are based entirely around death, destruction, and exploitation, while at that very same time, they try to preach life, love, peace, and brotherhood. Don't you think that's odd, Miss Remmi?"

"But, I'm getting on a tangent. All that I'm trying to say is that Miss Trilling had a point. Even though people are more than willing to start a fight with their neighbor, very few of them seem to be able to handle confronting social situations, or family members, let alone a Being of Higher Power and Sentience such as Fate. Most people—and I'm absolutely positive that you're aware of this, Miss Remmi—just want to go with the flow; not so much _living_ life, as simply passing through. They are. . . That is, they act as though they are unwanted guests in their own homes, the kind that are constantly complaining to the host that there is something wrong but never elaborate on the problem or give any clues as to what that elusive _something_ is. The world is filled with those kinds of people, you know? Absolutely _filled_ to the _brim_. Don't you agree, Miss Remmi?" Zero-zero waited for a response, patience quickly draining when one was not readily presented. He jerked his head to the other side to glare at the woman lying on the floor, bottom-heavy lips pulling up and back in an angry sneer.

"I _asked_ you a _question_ , Miss Remmi. Why won't you answer?" his voice was louder this time, and still the woman said nothing, the hollow expression on her face remaining unchanged. Zero-zero pouted, whining petulantly. "Look, it's not my fault! You refused to be more cooperative, and you got your due reward! It's not that complicated."

He took a deep, shaky breath, averting his gaze when she continued to do nothing. He realized that he had sounded somewhat desperate, like that he was trying more to convince himself than her, and that bothered him. It was not his fault. _He_ had not done anything wrong. Zero-zero crossed his arms over his chest, and decided that two could play at that game. ". . .Fine. You want to be stubborn and unresponsive? Be my guest. I don't care what you do anymore, Miss Remmi."

Several minutes passed in tense silence before the young man let out a frustrated sigh.

" _Gah_! I just can't take it anymore!" he exclaimed to his female companion, squeezing his eyes shut and bringing his hands up to the sides of his head to muss his hair in annoyance. Zero-zero looked to her with a mixed sense of wonder and confusion. "How do you _stand_ it, Miss Remmi?"

Miss Remmi's head lolled forward on her neck limply, almond eyes remaining blank and clouded as she stared forward without sight. He shrugged, deciding that it was probably time to give up. Miss Remmi obviously did not want to talk to him anymore today. Zero-zero reached down to pick his gun up off the concrete floor, calloused fingertips slipping along the wet and only slightly sticky grip as he tucked the weapon back into the waistband of his old jeans. He idly brushed at the cooling red liquid that had splattered along his arm, smearing it in his half-hearted attempt to wipe it off. Slowly, he walked away from her body, moving down the aisles of crates and oversized boxes towards the back of the warehouse.

He looked up to the old reactor nestled away safely in the corner with wide and hopeful eyes. Carefully, as he was painfully aware of the mood, Zero-zero reached out to the machine, delicately running a hand down its side. He took a step towards it, a smile dancing along the corners of his mouth. Even if Miss Remmi did not like him anymore, that did not matter, as long as he still had his God and his mission. Really, no matter how lonely he felt or how much he longed to hear another voice fill the suffocating silence, those two things were all he needed.

"I've waited a long time to meet you. . ." he whispered to the generator, both hands now traveling along its dust covered surface. His fingertips brushed across the faded designation as though it were lettered Braille, and he found himself holding his breath. The name. . . Dear God, the _name_. . . He let the air out in a shuddering gasp, eyes rolling up and back till only the whites showed beneath flickering lids. The rush of emotion that pulsed through him was incapacitating, filled him with unimaginable pleasure and excitement.

This was the machine—the relic, the ancient God to rival his own—that he had been searching for. This. . .this beautiful Being. . . How long had He been trapped here, forced to suffer the indignity of playing a piece of pathetic, pre-Nations Mobile Suit history? A timeless glory was held here, within this Being, and yet here it was: locked in some colonist's useless and outdated museum.

That loyalist _bitch_. He felt betrayed. How could she have done such a thing? Zero-zero immediately took back his first thoughts of her, now very certain that there was nothing at all pretty or nice about Miss Remmi and there never had been. He never wanted to see her again. His hands along the sides of the generator became a loving caress, and he pressed his lips to the name softly.

"Don't worry. I'll take care of you from now on. . ." he murmured breathlessly against the cold metal. "And I swear to you that you will see the battlefield again, my dear, dear _PHYSALIS_. . ."

A sharp sound from the entrance broke their intimate interlude, and Zero-zero jerked his head away, a dark scowl taking up residence on his countenance. What was it now?

* * *

 

— _Tap tap tap_. . .

Slowly, vision fuzzed and hazy with the dull sound of metal on stone ominously heavy in the otherwise silent room, the young man opened his dark eyes; deep-set blue peering through ragged blond before squeezing shut again. He was lying on his stomach, the chill from the concrete beneath him seeping in through his shirt, one arm curled under his chest and gripping the fabric above his heart. The noise— _tap tap tap_ —continued, and it only added to the painful throbbing at his temples. With an effort, the young man pushed himself up into a kneeling position. The lights above him, which had been off prior to his move, flickered on, cruelly bright and causing him to blink rapidly in his attempt to adjust. Another man's voice, as hard and cold as the rock substitute he knelt on, spoke above the incessant tapping:

"Hmph. . .it's alive. I should probably fix that, eh, _PHYSALIS_?" it said, an accent only just audible along the edges of his speech but thick enough to recognize. Japanese, L1-cluster dialect. He thought it odd for a moment, considering that he last remembered being near home; that home being located within the UAN's colony clusters. The other man, whom he could not see quite yet, scuffed his shoes on the floor, probably standing now. "State your name and designation, though I'm pretty sure that I know what you are."

"Wha—?" he began to ask, only then to feel the heel of the man's boot come down between his shoulder-blades and push him to the floor.

"Answer the question, you pretentious brat, lest I send a bullet through your skull in an effort appease God."

"Ah! . . .I-I don't have a designation," he tried, gasping when the man put his weight down on his back.

"The hell you don't. I know what you are, so don't try to play games with me," he gave a deep, throaty cough before spitting, the filmy white mucus hitting the younger man on the back of the neck. "You're that monstrosity, that horrid lusting beast; you are one of the takers of God. For this you will be punished according to the will that you have tried to destroy."

Pale brows furrowed, the young man was so confused, and he looked back over his shoulder, blue catching on dark cloth and dusky skin. It was still a blur—dark on dark on dark—though it was starting to focus, evolving from complete indistinction to base set-up. Hair, clothes, skin, something in the dark hand. The man crouched over him, pressing something smooth and cool against the back of his head. Round, metallic. The barrel of a gun; old-style 92 Brigadier FS, probably black, standard issue. Forty caliber semi-automatic pistol with single or double action, fifteen rounds. Not a bad choice.

"I-. . .I don't understa—" he tried to speak again, but the man forced his head down, slamming his nose against the hard concrete.

"Shut up! Don't lie to me; I will not be deceived!" it was screamed, voice grating and hoarse. Blood poured out from his nose, puddling on the ground, and the young man opened his mouth to breathe around it. "I am God's protector, and the punisher of the wicked. You, who have so defiled God with your filth, with your sinner's hands and deviant mind, will soon face His wrath, and so shall be annihilated. I will send your immortal soul to the infernos of Hell!"

 _God_. . . What was this crazed enigma that the man spoke of; that he hissed praise through his teeth as he took the safety off? The young man tried to lick his lips, the sharp taste of copper and dust heavy on his tongue. "W-wait. . ." he stammered, breath hitching in his throat. "Wait. . ."

"Oh? Will you beg forgiveness? God does not forgive the wicked, and neither do I. You have one last chance to state your name, sinner."

". . .Q-Quatre. . .m-my. . .name is Quatre."


	5. Feel Nothing

Aaron Flecker was not a religious man. Already nearing the age of fifty, not once had he ever caught himself wondering if there were angels watching over him, or an ultimate power who dictated his future. Flecker had never been able to believe in fate and destiny. He heralded from a family of Roman Catholics turned Atheist, branching all the way back to the pre-colony days before science and technology killed the priests and burned the bible. Prayer was considered blasphemous nowadays; the church a taboo subject in most households. And, for the vast majority of his life—from birth to this very moment, in fact—Aaron Flecker had never believed in God.

But now, surrounded by sobbing friends and co-workers, he found himself in a crowded room with his hands clasped in front of him, lips moving fervently in some half-forgotten Christian mantra. He found himself wishing—praying, if you will—that there was a God; that He existed, and He was merciful. That He would deliver them, His 'devout children,' from harm. The man next to him was down on his knees, hysterically screaming 'God save us, God save us' through his tears.

A heavy thud rattled the room, terror bouncing off the metal walls as the lights flickered off, then back on again. The power was going out. Another shudder, and it was gone, the people in the room plunged into darkness. Flecker could feel the panic rising up in his throat like bile; his chest constricting painfully as he tried to breathe, lungs working overtime as he began hyperventilating. Desperately, he fought against the frenzied throng; pushing, shoving, biting. The man next to him had already fallen silent, trampled to death beneath the feet of his friends.

The creak and groan of reinforced steel brought them back to their senses, faces upturned as all eyes went to the ceiling. It was quiet except for the muffled cries of the injured that went unheard, ignored as the sounds of strain from above continued, growing. The air was thick with tension, and now the sound had changed to a violent hammering— _thud thud thud_. Flecker was breathing heavily through his nose, the sweat from his brow dripping down into his eyes, but he did not bring a hand up to wipe it away. He stood, riveted on the spot; pupils dilated in fear.

 _God save us_. . . he tried to whisper, but his mouth could only work in silence, his voice seeming to have fled. Vaguely, as though he felt the action through some kind of trance, he realized that someone had taken his hand, perhaps for comfort he did not have to give.

Finally, Flecker was able to look away; simply listening to the people around him scream and feeling the air being forcefully ripped from his body as the searing heat cut down through the ceiling of the shelter, hearing the hiss of liquid metal spatter against human flesh, burning through multiple layers of skin and bone. Flashes exploded on the other side of his closed lids, and it was only a brief and flighty moment before the hot, tainted-blue light slammed into him and then. . .

And then. . .

And then he did not hear, and he did not feel, anything, anymore.

* * *

 

"—Miss Darlian, as the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, surely you can tell us more about the current groups in question? Is it possible that the perpetrators are using these latest attacks to throw off the investigations?"

Relena sighed, giving the reporter—a relatively young man with glasses that kept slipping down his nose—a rather terse smile as she held back the urge to scream. She knew that smacking the man upside the head would have looked very bad on camera, and so found something vaguely resembling restraint. A deep, steadying breath, and several press flashes later, she managed a response:

"The ongoing investigations are making progress. Unfortunately, no single individual or organization has yet been identified as the attacker. Our committees are doing their best to find and stop them before these tragedies can continue. Security within the colonies is our top priority, and—"

"Ma'am, how many more people need to die as a result of the ESUN Council's inability to act? Shouldn't we be arming ourselves against these terrorists, going in and wiping them out before more atrocities are allowed to be committed?"

She narrowed her eyes at the reporter's question, her teeth coming down sharply on the side of her tongue as she bit down a harsh retort to his foolishness. Things were not that easy. They could not simply 'arm themselves' and rush out into space with angry war cries and their judgment clouded by bloodlust. It was bad enough having to listen to the colony representatives fuss and complain about Earth's lack of involvement; the last thing she needed was some young upstart goading the people into a violent retaliation with—at best—a half-formed plan.

"For us to maintain peace within the nations, we cannot raise ourselves to another war. Whoever these people are, this is obviously what they want: to frighten us into a corner, and tear down everything that we have worked for over all these years. The Preventers and interstellar police forces are currently working together to find these criminals, as well as the international police located here on Earth. We are exhausting all possible resources in our efforts to catch them, and it is only a matter time before the individuals responsible are brought to justice."

She had not yet mentioned the video call that she had received almost six months prior to the first attack; did not want to tell the Council that the terrorist had contacted her with the intent to warn her of the coming 'reign of terror.' Though she instinctively knew that it was wrong, she wanted more than anything to keep that secret to herself, perhaps out of the assumption that he would attempt to call her again. At that time, she hoped to appeal to his better nature—for surely, all men, no matter how vile and evil, still maintained a semblance of their humanity that could be appealed to—and persuade him to stop. There must be _something_ at the root of his actions, some grievance that could be addressed peacefully.

"One last question, if you please, Miss Darlian," the young man said, pushing his glasses up with one finger, and then pausing to quickly jot something down in his notes. "There has been talk of the ESUN Council reinstating the death penalty in this case. Can you shed any light on these rumors?"

". . .They are only rumors. Thank you, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen."


	6. Hear Nothing

The phone was ringing.

Wufei rolled his eyes, closing the sliding glass door with an irritable sigh. What now? He quickly thought through the possible people that it could have been. Master O never called, the new head of the Long family only communicated with him through the written word, and few members of the latest arms movement he had joined had his number. The police again, perhaps? No, they had only just released him from questioning yesterday; there was no way that they had come up with anything else to harass him over in such little time. Wufei tapped the button for the speaker as he walked by the desk, one arm full of sheets he was bringing in from the clothes line outside. There was a muted beep, and then a bright and cheerful voice came over the line:

"Hey, good morning!"

"Maxwell?" Wufei paused, setting the sheets down and picking up the handset. "What day is it?"

"Uh. . .Tuesday?" the answer came back uncertain, but Wufei knew better. If Duo was calling, then it must have been a Tuesday; he had called on the second Tuesday of every month for the last year and a half since Wufei had left the Preventers, mostly to see how things were going and to just shoot the breeze. It was ritual now, and while Wufei would grumble and complain about how the American was wasting his time, he was rather fond of their chats. It was nice to talk to someone so upbeat and optimistic sometimes. "Anyway, how's it hangin'? I heard you spent the night in jail again."

"Does news really travel that fast?"

"It does when you're a war hero," the reply came with a laugh, and Wufei allowed himself a small smile and faint snort. Hero. . . Duo had to use that word at least once in every conversation; he was glad that it was getting out of the way so early on. "So, what happened this time?"

"Ah, I wrote an article about the way that the government subjugates its people by refusing them the right to keep weapons in their personal homes that was published in a controversial journal," the Chinaman shrugged, then remembered that his listener could not see the action, and added. "It's the same thing that happened last time you called."

"Nah, that was the time before, remember?"

Wufei stopped to think about that for a moment, before making a soft sound of agreement. On the other end of the line, he could hear Duo fiddling with something, probably a pen. Duo usually called from his office at the Preventers' headquarters, and the young man could not seem to stand letting his hands stay idle for long. Wufei sat down on the corner of the desk top, cradling the handset between ear and shoulder as he began folding the sheets.

"What about with you? I've heard that there's some nasty business in the L4 clus—"

"If you want to know so badly, you could always join back up," Duo cut in, his tone a familiar mixture of worry and mild annoyance. They did this every month, too, but it was a little different this time. Wufei narrowed his eyes. Usually, Duo waited until near the end of the conversation to try to recruit him. "We're still short-handed."

"Uh-huh. Do you still hire women as field agents?" Wufei waited, listening to the sound of Duo breathing, knowing that there would be no response. _Of course_ there were still women in the Preventers; it would have been big news if Lady Une had turned over control of the program to someone else. Wufei's tone turned cold, his previously amiable expression icing over into the soldier's mask of indifference. "I will never work there so long as women are in the field."

". . .What happened to Sally—"

"If you finish that sentence, I will hang up on you."

"Come on, 'Fei," Duo groaned, and Wufei heard the familiar sound of the American slamming his hand against the desk on the other end of the line. "Why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep holding on to it?"

" _What_?" Wufei was furious, his vision suddenly clouded by bloodlust and anger. "You're telling me to just let it go? To forget about what happened? Are you serious?"

"No, I—"

"Have you ever held a dying woman in your arms, Maxwell?" the question was stated bluntly, dry like years of mourning had emptied his body of all emotions. It was a tired sound that Wufei made, the sound of an old soldier exhausted from years of death and dying. "Have you ever had a woman's blood pour out over your hands as you watch her cry and gasp for her last breath? Have you ever had to listen to her feeble voice as she chokes on death while trying to pass on the last words she will ever speak?"

"It wasn't your fault she died. There was nothing anybody could have done."

"Women do not belong in combat," Wufei was not angry when he said it, was still hollow and empty sounding. It was not normal. "She should have stayed at headquarters. She should never have been a field agent. And it was our fault that she was there that day, because if she hadn't been paired with me, she would be alive and working in a goddamn hospital today, _where she belongs_."

"Please don't hang up on me."

"You don't understand death, Duo. For all that you claim to be its patron god. . ." Wufei sighed, putting down the laundry he had been folding and rubbing at his temple with one hand. He held the phone in his other. "A woman's death is a hundred thousand times worse than a man's. . . Why did you call? What is it that you want?"

". . . You know the Gundam rumors?" he waited until he had heard the quiet grunt of acknowledgement before continuing. "I want to get everyone together, all us pilots and the scientists, and I want to get to the bottom of it before it's too late. Relena can do her pacifist thing if she wants, but I want the guy's head on a spike. Will you come?"

"Where?"

"L1, C-1013," Duo paused briefly, perhaps to wet dry lips or swallow. The next part was spoken in a rush. "And can you call Trowa? I can't find the guy anywhere; it's like he disappeared."

"Yeah. Yeah, I have an emergency number for him," Wufei sighed again, standing up and looking out the sliding glass door. His gaze brushed over the well-trimmed lawn, the sand garden further out, and the carefully pruned vegetation. He would need to call someone to take care of his bonsai plants while he was out. "I'll head out on the next available flight."

"You're a life-saver, 'Fei."

"And you're an inconsiderate moron."

Wufei hung up.

* * *

 

"We're not having this argument, Cecilia," Trowa's voice was clipped, terse, a polite formality that seemed oddly out of place in the bright living room. The woman standing across from him quivered, lips trembling with the force of some bottled emotion. Fear, anger, regret, sorrow? Was that confusion he saw evident in her pale blue eyes? It could have been, but Trowa was growing tired of this fighting game, this incessant bickering between them, and did not want to deal with it anymore. "Not here and not now."

"Then when _is_ a good time, Markus?" she asked him bitterly, her delicate hands clenching at her side. Trowa lowered his head at the use of the false name, closing his eyes. Cecilia wanted to talk out all of their problems, wanted to sift through some intensive dialog for a menagerie of answers that, once found, would rid them of this brewing tension. She wanted him to be honest, to speak with her openly and freely about all the things that had happened since 'he' was deployed during the Eve Wars. "You're too busy in the mornings, you're too tired at night. . .I feel like you don't even look at me anymore! What is happening to you? To us? To this family? Markus—"

"Shh," he interrupted her softly, raising a hand for silence. Cecilia complied, the line of her mouth a thin and angry slash across her face. Trowa took a slow, deep breath through his nose, carefully planning out his next statement. He always had to be so careful with his words around her; this illusion, this lie that was 'Markus,' was delicate, a finely woven tale that he had invested far too much time and effort in for anything to be done hastily. It was not his real name any more than Trowa Barton had been his real name before the war. Somewhere, there were records of his true name and origins. Somewhere, there was a father wondering what had happened to his wayward son.

But Trowa did not care for 'somewhere.' That was why he had left all those years ago, after all; that was why he had left his name and the identity he had been born with on the ruined steps of his father's old estate. Taking on a dead man's name and face, integrating himself into an established family. . .at the time, it had seemed like a daring undertaking. He had faced it like a challenge to be overcome. Now, four years into the act, Trowa was beginning to falter as the lines between the man and the image began to mesh, to fade together until even Trowa had trouble distinguishing where he stopped and 'Markus' began. He opened his eyes, and met her gaze steadily.

"Not so loud, Cecilia—"

"You don't think they know?" her tone was incredulous, a slight breathy exhalation belaying a sense of shock, or perhaps betrayal. A hand came up from her side, clutched at the cloth over her heart. She had always been dramatic like that, Trowa noted idly. It was neither good nor bad, but simply _was_. His observation was a fact unhindered by opinion or bias, made in a boredly scientific manner. He sighed, and prepared himself for the oncoming storm. "They _know_ that something is wrong, Markus. It doesn't matter if they hear us right now, because they've been hearing us fighting behind closed doors for the last _three months_ , and they know that we're fighting because you just won't say _anything_!"

They. William and Valerie. Trowa sunk into a seat on the sofa, putting a hand to his forehead as if that would ward off the oncoming headache. He did not know what to tell her. What would Markus say in this situation? He did not know the answer anymore.

". . .What do you want me to say, Cecilia?"

"Oh, don't you start with that again," her words were sharp, biting when she spat them into the air between them violently. The hand at her chest dropped. "Don't you _dare_ start with that 'what do you want from me' bullshit again, Markus—"

"Don't curse like that, what if Valerie—"

"—We're having this argument, and we're having it _right now_!" she yelled, overpowering his soft request. Trowa fell into silence, and Cecilia continued, fuming. "What the Hell is going on, Markus? You're withdrawn; you won't talk to me, let alone touch me, and you just haven't been yourself lately. What is it that you're trying to tell me?"

"I—"

"Is it another woman?" she cut him off, a gasp following this question as though he had already answered it. Cecilia was being irrational, hyper-emotional and illogical. As sexist and wrong as it may have been, Trowa could not stop himself from justifying her actions through her gender; from his experience, this was just the way that women were. They did not make sense, and they were constantly reading far too much into everything. Sometimes, the answer really was so much simpler than all that drama. "It is, isn't it? You've been seeing another woman. Do you want a divorce? Is that what you're trying to tell me with this behavior?"

"No," he held out the vowel a little long, trying not to let his own annoyance with her overactive imagination show. She was being paranoid, and the last thing that the situation needed was for her to take any of his statements as being defensive. This called for a very gentle diffusion. "I do not want a divorce."

"But you have been—"

"No, I haven't," he told her in that mild, deliberate manner of his. 'Markus' had never really spoken like that before the war, but it was a habit that Trowa could not seem to break. It was his hallmark, his trade signature; it was the tiny aspect of himself that he took with him no matter what name or face he was wearing at the time. "I'm quiet because this is a stressful time for us right now. A thousand people are going to get laid off from work, Valerie needs braces, and William broke his arm in practice two weeks ago. Why are you trying to fight with me, Cecilia?"

He saw the tears welling up in her eyes, noticed the way that she wrung her hands together in front of her, and raised a brow. Why was she acting this way? Cecilia had always had a penchant for the dramatic, this was true, but now that she had quieted down. . . This was certainly not normal. Trowa opened his mouth to speak again, but just then, the cell phone in the pocket of his blazer went off, startling them both. He pulled it out to check the name and number while he turned off the ringer.

"I—"

"Just a second, Cecilia. . ." he murmured, looking at the display screen oddly. A call from China? There was only one person that he knew in China, but why would Wufei be calling him? He flipped the phone open, holding it to his ear, a look of worry crossing his face. "Hello?"

"Trowa? Is that you?"

For one pivotal moment, the whole world seemed to stop. Time slowed to a crawl as Cecilia placed her hands delicately over her lower abdomen, looking down at herself with knit brows and a tiny, uncertain frown. Sound disappeared after her next wavering statement as the roaring silence of shock filled Trowa's head.

"Markus? I think I'm pregnant again."


	7. Want Nothing

_(Burning breaking shattering screaming)_

Redredred till the light from my eyes his eyes their eyes are blinding, shaking, bringing something slithering up from the flashing panels along the sidelines, and it's so coldcoldcold and I don't see through the redredred that pours off my hands his hands their hands and onto the slick metal beneath me so that it drips downdowndown and the cruel metal smiles and it's all so good and I'm doing so so good. Are you proud? Do I make you proud?

_(Twitch shudder gasp)_

I can't breathe anymore.

But that's okay, Grampa; 'cause I don't need to I promise I'll be good and I'll be perfect like you want me to be. I can be everything you need me to be, Grampa; I promise you don't need to throw me away oh please don't throw me away, Grampa. . .

Nonono I won't get scared and I won't cry and I thought I promised not scream. . .

_(Grampa, please don't kill me. . .)_

Oh god I don't wanna die. . .

_(I'll get better I'll do better next time oh please Grampa, gimme another cha—)_

* * *

 

He jerked, eyes snapping open so suddenly that it was almost audible, the paranoid tension tangible and heavy like blood in his mouth. Rolling, darting, tearing; blue and steel irises all but swallowing the black as his eyes searched the inanimate furnishings of the room. The thin blanket he had been using the night before lay in a tangled mess on the floor beside the couch, television set still muted but on with white subtitles in katakana scrolling across the bottom of the screen. A pack of cigarettes on the chipped and peeling coffee table, sitting next to his opened laptop. He started breathing again, low and shallow. Everything was in order.

Slowly he sat up, brushed the messy brown bangs from his eyes in abstract irritation, and looked across the cluttered room to the darkened hall. Squinting, he could barely see the black curtains—the lights in his apartment were all off—drawn shut on the window behind him. He hauled himself to his feet, picked the cigarettes off the table in the same motion and headed back to the kitchen, stumbled and tripped on something in the doorway that he did not care to identify. It was jarring, and the force of his body hitting the tiles knocked him out of his vague reverie; woke him the hell up. He rolled over onto his back, pulled a cigarette out and held it between his lips as he regarded the ceiling.

Was this it? Was this living? Waking up every morning the same way: slightly sore from where the springs on his couch had worn through, in a bad apartment in the bad part of town, needing a cigarette and something heavy to drink before he could manage to drag himself out to his bad job with its worse pay? It did not seem worth it, when he thought about it like that. But he needed a cigarette and something heavy to drink before he could really think anymore. And so, disgusted as he was with himself, the young man got back up, found the lighter on the counter with one hand as he pulled a glass down from one of the cabinets. A moment's work, lighting that cigarette and smoking it halfway down with equal ease, and then his cell phone started ringing.

Annoyed, he unceremoniously answered around his cigarette: "If you're not Doctor J or somebody from the firm, I'm hanging up right now."

"Damn, Heero; you're just as friendly as always. Do you normally answer the phone like that?" the voice set a light twitch going off under his left eye. Boyishly high though not feminine, it had a horrible American accent on its badly spoken Japanese.

"Hn," a trademarked sound, and he opened the refrigerator. "Who the hell is this?"

"What? You tellin' me you don't remember my name?"

"Actually, I'd _like_ to be telling you to fuck off and not ever call me again, but I guess I'll have to settle with 'yes.' Now who are you and why are you calling?" he came away with a groan, slamming the door close. "Goddamn it. . ."

"Huh, what's wrong?" the voice was curious now, and he could almost imagine its faceless owner trying to peer through the mouthpiece to see for himself.

"I'm out of scotch. Answer my question."

"Come on, guess; who could I be?"

Heero had smoked the cigarette down to the filter by this point, and idly flicked the butt into the sink before getting another one. "You know, if you don't tell me, then I'm just hanging up anyway."

"What the hell is in your mouth? Are you eating breakfast or something?"

"Yeah, something like that. . ."

"Oi, it's me: Duo! Remember now, Heero?"

"How the hell did you get this number?"

"Uh. . ." Duo thought for a moment, dragging out the noise until he could come up with a response. "I got it from. . .G! And G got it from J, I think. Why? And if you're eating breakfast, why does it matter if you have any scotch?"

"Ugh," he was digging through the cabinet under the sink, moving bottles around with one hand as he searched. "I wanted to know who betrayed me. And—not that it's any of your business, you nosy bastard—scotch is the most important aspect of my morning meal. But I don't have—wait, this will work."

"Hey, what is it?"

"Russian vodka." The young man on the other side laughed, and Heero stood back up and moved over to the counter where his glass was. "I don't get it; what's so funny?"

"Are you even old enough to drink yet?"

"No, not quite."

"But you're gonna have vodka for breakfast anyway?"

"Duo, we used to kill people. That wasn't exactly legal, either. Besides, I never go out and drink."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. . ." a small pause before he continued, obviously amused. "I can't believe _you_ are having _vodka_ for breakfast. . ."

"Oh my—please shut up. You're giving me a headache."

"Okay, okay; I'll get serious, I promise. So where the hell is your apartment?"

"No."

"What? Whaddya mean, 'no?' You live _somewhere_ , don't you?"

"No. I have managed to reverse my evolution and am now a form of primordial ooze. Currently, I am evaporating into a colorless but very poisonous gas that will float around the inside of the colony killing hundreds upon thousands of innocent people. However, because this transformation has caused me to lose both my body and all recognizable traits of humanity, I can no longer function under science's limited rules. Thus, I can no longer be considered an organic, _living_ organism. What a shame."

"Bah. Screw you," he had switched to English for that comment, but came back to Japanese for the following. "Look, I'm already here, and I came to get you. So where the hell is your apartment?"

". . .Came to get me for what, Duo?" Heero sounded suspicious, sounded paranoid and he knew it. He downed the glass, refilled it once, and repeated. The young man on the other end sighed, exasperated.

"Why are you eating breakfast at a time like this?"

"Why do you keep changing the subject?"

"How about: because I'm human. Will that work for you?"

"Eh," he watched the smoke curl up from the end of his cigarette, ground the remainders into the counter and finished his drink. "It's too early. I don't do mornings well, anymore."

". . .It's four-thirty, Heero. On a _Thursday_."

"I know; Thursday's my day off, which means that it's morning until midnight."

A derisive snort, and Heero ignored the smart-ass comment that Duo flung at him in English. "You must be the only loser who has _Thursday_ off, jeez. . ."

"Oh, wow. That hurt; like I've never been childishly insulted by a half-brained American dick before."

". . ." there was a long pause. "Didn't you want to know what I was coming to get you for?"

"That was such a brilliant comeback, Duo. It brought tears to my eyes."

"Shut up."

"Fine, talk."

Another minute passed, this one in silence, and Heero raised a brow questioningly. The cigarettes had found their way back to the pocket of his open work shirt, the lighter from the counter migrating to the pocket of his jeans. He had a feeling he might need it.

". . .You remember hearing about those terrorists? Y'know, the ones going after colonies and all that? Well, I got a hold of Wufei—who got a hold of Trowa—and J, G, H, and O—shit, I feel like an idiot reciting the alphabet—and we're all meeting back up to talk about it."

"Because of the Gundam rumors?"

"Pretty much, yeah. I mean, these are the bad guys, Heero. It's still our _job_ to get rid of them. Protect the innocents, y'know?"

"I know, but. . ." there was a long pause, and Heero shook his head. ". . .Not everything's that easy, Duo. There's no black and white, no 'good guy' versus 'bad guy' scenario here."

"They're _killing_ people, Heero. Lots of 'em."

"So did we."

"Yeah, but we never _blew up_ any of the colonies."

". . .Yes we did."

Neither of them said anything. It was not something that they could deny. Duo sighed.

"Look, I know how you feel, okay? But we were fighting for a reason, and—"

"And what? And that makes it all right? And that somehow justifies us?" he slammed his fist into the counter, tiles cracking under the blow. "What made us any different from them, hmn? Who decides this shit, anyway? I don't want any part of your stupid hero-games, Duo. I've spent too long trying to erase that past, and I'm not going to pick it back up for you, or anybody else."

"Heero, come on; please—"

"No! I'm not a soldier anymore, goddamn it! It's not my responsibility to make sure that every jack-ass with a big gun and twitchy finger gets what's coming to him. You want to be some kind of savior again? Good for you. Just leave me the hell out of it."

". . .A'right. We're gonna be at the old research center down on. . .52nd? I think that's where it is. Near that big field; didn't it used to be a park, or somethin'? Anyway, if you want to show up and help us out, you know where to go. If not," Duo paused, probably shrugging. "Then J will just get the fuck over it. See ya."

Duo hung up, leaving Heero with the small phone still pressed against his ear until the monotonous ring of the dial tone kicked in, loud in all that silence. He shook his head again, squeezed his eyes shut against it like that would make everything okay. It would not, he knew that, but sometimes it still felt good to pretend. Sometimes, but not this time. This time it did not do anything.

"N-no," he forced it out, strained. "I won't. I don't have to, and I don't want to. I. . .I just. . .for once in my life, I just want to be like every other nobody on this colony." _I don't want to be a soldier anymore_. . .

He ran a hand through his hair, yanked the fingers through a few knots and said it looked fine before heading out the door.


	8. Do Nothing

". . .It's been a long time, Heero," Wufei said, offering his hand to the other pilot. They clasped each other's arm above the wrist and Heero seemed to relax almost immediately at the gesture. Wufei looked him over once—took in the traces of heavy alcohol and cigarette smoke on his breath—before releasing him, frowning. "You look terrible. Is everything all right?"

"Well, it _was_. But then I got called here. Where's everyone else?"

"Duo's inside, talking to Professor G, I think," he paused for a moment, dark brows slightly furrowed as he looked past Heero to the snow covered field stretching out behind them. "Trowa dropped me a line earlier; said he'd be running a little late for the meeting, but not to worry about it. He was very evasive about the whole thing."

"Hn. I'm not surprised. Who else came?" Heero was reaching into the pocket of his work shirt, pulling a cigarette out and holding it between his teeth. He began searching for his lighter. Wufei shrugged.

"The usuals, I suppose. Doctor S just arrived a little while ago, and Master O and I came earlier. Instructor H is here, but. . ."

"But what?"

Wufei shook his head, leaning back against the railing and crossing his arms over his chest. "He's of no use. Last I saw, he was going over some documents in one of the old facilities almost manically. The man looks broken, Heero."

"Do you know what's wrong with him?"

"I was assuming that the other scientists knew, but that doesn't really seem to be the case. Master O and Doctor S are just as lost as we are. I think that Doctor J and Professor G are withholding some valuable information on what's going on."

"And it's only given out on a need-to-know basis, right?"

"Mm-hmn, and we don't need to know, according to them." Heero finally found his lighter, shielded the small flame with his free hand as he lit up. He took a long drag of the cigarette, exhaling the smoke slowly through his nose as he turned, following Wufei's gaze. "Which is interesting, considering that _they_ were the ones who called _us_ to this little 'meeting'. . ."

"I thought it was Duo's idea. And is Quatre coming? You didn't mention him before."

"Hm? Oh," Wufei gave him a confused look, like the question had startled him. "I have no idea. Probably not; we couldn't get a hold of him. No surprise there, either."

"What do you mean? Was he too busy to come? I know he has his business to take care of but still—"

"What are you talking about, Heero?" the Asians stared at each other for a long moment, both questioning and waiting for the other to answer. Wufei was the first to comply. "Didn't you know? Quatre's been missing for nearly a month now. No one's seen him since he went to X-17603; it's been all over the news lately."

Heero's face went blank, his mind quickly following suit, and he looked down at the frosted pavement. He held the cigarette delicately between fore- and middle finger. "I had no idea. . .X-17603? That's in the L4 cluster, isn't it?"

"That's right. They've threatening to leave the UAN for a while, and so Quatre was sent there for negotiations. Didn't you hear about it?"

"I vaguely remember that. I try not to pay attention to what other colonies are doing," Heero shrugged, dropping the cigarette and grinding it out with his heel. "I figure I've got enough to worry about with any outside interference."

"Times really do change people."

"Hn."

Wufei tilted his head upward, squinting into the artificial light of the blue-grey sky. ". . .Rumor had it that X-17603 still had weapons left over from the Eve Wars; that they'd been stockpiling for years. Some even said that they were planning biochemical warfare on the other colonies if the UAN didn't give them what they wanted."

"Well, it's a good thing that some idiot went and blew them up last week then, now isn't it?"

"Does cynicism make you feel better?"

". . .Yeah, a little. Let's head in; we might as well get this over with."

* * *

A man's voice, low and not quite second-bass, could be heard throughout the hangar, reverberating and bouncing back from the metal. Quatre looked up for the sound, removing the welder's mask he wore and pressing one hand up under sweat-soaked bangs. The owner of the voice was hanging above him, suspended in the air by a series of pulleys and gurneys. He, too, was welding, cascades of sparks drifting down like hellish snowflakes. Quatre smiled and flicked the mask back into place.

" _Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,_ " the man sang out in heavily accented English, the hymn vibrant and alive with energy. " _He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He hath loos'd the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword_. . .!"

"Maru! Hey, Maru!" Quatre shouted up, stepping away from the foot of the Gundam they were working on. The blue flames of the torch went out at the beginning of the 'Glory's, the older man responding with an irritable 'what now?' to which Quatre only smiled. "Let's take a break, Maru; we've been at it all morning."

"Alright. . ." he sounded unhappy with the decision, but slid down the ropes all the same. They left the tools there on the floor, leather gloves and welding aprons creating a crumpled pile beside the metal. As they walked out of the hangar, Quatre casting a final glance back at the Gundam. Dull colors, tan and light brown, muted yellow and so much white. The reminders of the desert brought a smile to his face again. _Sandrock_. . .

"So," Zero-zero began, now going by the name 'Maru Rei' simply because it sounded less like the designation it stood for. He was toying with a set of keys in one hand, the other trailing along the hallway wall. The keys belonged to Quatre, went to a car that they were using for the duration of their stay on X-19987 in the L6 cluster near Saturn. "Have you given any thought to my suggestion?"

"You mean about putting in a new generator?"

"Mn. I could get another for him, if you're both all right with it."

"I don't know. . ." Quatre said, looking off somewhere to his left as they stepped out of the building and into the light. A little girl was walking across the street, holding her mother's hand. He stood there, watching them with an odd look on his face, wondering in that idle way if the child would be saved. Blinking, he shook himself out of his brief reverie, turning back to his companion. "I don't think that it's really necessary, Maru; Sandrock doesn't need it, and I'm a little worried about whether or not adding something like that would change him."

"Understandable. I won't press you on it."

"Thank you."

". . .Do you have your list done yet?" Maru asked, trying to mask the childish eager from his voice and failing miserably. They headed down the street, turning to the right at the corner and continuing toward a small coffee vendor just ahead. Quatre shook his head not quite ruefully.

"I haven't exactly had a lot of time for it, you know. B-but," he added quickly upon seeing the dark glare and trigger-twitch in Maru's hand. "I'll get it done. Don't worry."

"Good," Maru's voice was that harsh whisper again, like when they first met but without the gun. "We'll be finished with repairs in two days. You'd better be done by then, too. Because if you can't find the innocents here, then I'll just kill them all and let God sort it out in the end."

He grinned after that, slinging an arm around the pale Arab's shoulder, leaning heavily to that side. "So let's get some caffeine and commit mass genocide in the morning. Whaddya say, eh, Quatre?"

It took him a moment to catch the joke, to hear the deep laugh that followed. For a minute there, he had forgotten just how dangerous his new friend was. For just one second, he had forgotten how utterly insane this whole mess was. But he knew better now, and he realized that a part of him really did not care. It was almost frightening; standing next to Maru and coming to that shocking revelation. His companion did not care who died anymore, and that kind of apathy was rubbing off on him. Quatre sighed, closing his eyes. They were playing pretend, reenacting the Crusades with a science-fiction twist and six year-old leader. It did not bode well.

". . .Yeah, Maru; I know. Let's kill 'em all."


	9. Understand Nothing

"—How many survivors, did you say?" Doctor J asked, head turning to regard the twitching wreck across from him. There were only ten of them around the long table, papers and newspaper articles strewn haphazardly over the imitation wood. The eleventh was still on his way, supposedly, but at this point Trowa's arrival seemed unlikely. Instructor H jumped when he was spoken to, dropping the reports he had been holding. He started stuttering, trying to stammer out an answer as his hands fumbled with the paper. Professor G sighed, exasperated with the instructor's nervous babbling and spastic reactions.

"From which colony?"

"X-19987."

"About two hundred. They escaped on a space bus that had left an hour before the colony was destroyed. The shuttle was headed for the Sanc Kingdom in the ESUN. Hmn. . ." Professor G set the report aside and went back to scanning the stack he had been assigned to. "Lucky bastards."

". . .Is anyone else noticing a pattern here?" Heero had long since stopped reading, now standing in front of a star chart on the wall, marking where the colony had been. Wufei looked up, dark eyes shifting from map to pilot and then back down to the article.

"You mean, 'couple hundred people run away to Sanc, and _then_ the colony gets blown up?' Yeah, I've noticed that, too," it was Duo talking, tossing the report he had been double checking across the table. "I think it reeks of conspiracy. Bet somebody's trying to connect these attacks to Relena and get her ousted."

"No, not that. . ." Heero murmured, tapping one of the colonies on the map. "All these colonies—"

"Well, what about the Barton Foundation? A lot of people are still holding grudges from the Mariemaia incident, for one reason or another," Duo continued, ignoring whatever it had been that Heero was trying to say. He tilted his chair onto its back two legs, rocking slightly. "I mean, is it possible that they're involved somehow? Either as the actual perpetrators or as the real target for the terrorists?"

"Doubtful," Wufei said with a sigh, also putting down the article he was reading. "Some of the colonies belong with the Foundation, and even if they _were_ behind the attacks—"

"They're not."

The men around the table turned to the door at the sound of the voice, Duo nearly lost his balance as his chair snapped back to a stable position. Wufei was abruptly on his feet, and Heero's hand tensed as he held back the urge to draw a gun. Slim shoulders rose in a small shrug, a light duffel bag hitting the floor with a dull thump, and the middle aged man in the doorway raised his hands to show that he was unarmed.

"The Foundation has a certain way of doing things, and guerrilla warfare isn't part of their style. Besides, most of them are preoccupied with Mariemaia's political situation right now," he looked up, surprisingly light blue eyes standing out in his sun-darkened face. One hand fell back to his side, and the other came up to run through his bright red hair. "If they don't get the majority of the ESUN Council and the UCL to vote for her, then in three months she'll be seeing the grand tour of _Wieder Gefängnis_ , a female penitentiary in southern Germany. I've been checking on the activities of all the family members who might possibly have a motive, but it seems like the Bartons aren't the villains this time."

They stared at him, confused and uncertain, for the span of several minutes before Duo finally broke the silence that had followed the stranger's explanation:

"And you would be who?"

" _Trowa_!?" it was Wufei who recognized the man first, the name said in utter astonishment as he walked over to the ex-pilot, mouth slightly agape. "You. . .you look so old! And what the hell did you do to your _hair_?"

The man before them chuckled slightly, clasping the Chinese pilot by the forearms instead of a handshake. "Life does that to you, and I dyed it, Wufei; calm down."

"What for?"

"I. . .I just needed a change, that's all. I don't really want anyone recognizing me."

". . .That would explain your eyes." The two turned to look back at Heero, who had—upon hearing the familiar name—relaxed to his natural state of being wound-up too tight. "You had the color surgically altered, didn't you? They used to be green."

The room was quiet for a moment, and Duo leaned back against the table, crossing his arms over his chest. "Well, I'm glad you could make it, Trowa. We need all the help we can get. We're not any closer to figuring out what's going on with the attacks than when we started."

"Heero," the name was said softly but still sounded like a command, and he looked back to Doctor J. A tension settled in his shoulders, and it took all of his old training to keep his body from trembling in that childish fear. His muscles constricted as if preparing for the strike. "You had started to say something before."

"Th-they. . .they're all old MS colonies."

"Come again?" Duo seemed confused, and he straightened, walking over to the map. "Whaddya mean, 'old MS colonies?'"

"Just look at the map. X-19987 used to have the largest and most advanced gundanium and titanium refineries this side of L1; X-17603 was built practically on top of a huge deposit of raw gundanium, and they were ones who first discovered the GND formula; the technology needed for the prototype Crush Shield and Planet Defensors was first developed on X-21432; and X-16514 had the scientists and laboratories responsible for most of the breakthroughs in beam weapon technology," Heero looked back at the others, brows furrowing thoughtfully. "It looks to me like this perpetrator doesn't like the people responsible for creating mobile suits."

Doctor J and Professor G shared a look and then returned their respective gazes to the map. They said nothing, and when it became apparent to everyone that they were not sharing, Wufei moved back over to the table. He leaned over the imitation wood, hands pressed palm-down on the paperwork, fingers splayed.

"That doesn't make any sense. If they wanted to destroy mobile suits, then they wouldn't be using them. What else, other than a battleship or space fortress, can just blow up a colony and move on?"

Master O whispered something to his charge in Cantonese, and no one could follow their fast-paced argument. It ended with Wufei sitting back down and glaring at the scientists angrily.

"Nothing really. And if it was a ship of some kind someone would have noticed it by now. No, it had to be something much smaller," Trowa finally said, moving from the doorway. He stopped closer to the rest of the group, thinking. "But what gets to me is that there's never been any sighting of a mobile suit in the areas surrounding the targeted colonies before the attack. Even if it is a Gundam, it still needs to refuel at some point."

". . .Not necessarily."

"Alright, you old bastard," Duo turned to face his scientist, arms crossed over his chest. "Whaddya know?"

"I know nothing," he said, raising his hands in a sign of peaceful surrender. "My memory has been wiped clear by time and disease. A pity, really, when you think about it—"

" _G_ ," the American said the letter like a threat, and the professor snickered.

"There are some kinds of generators that don't require fuel. In fact, I had been hunting one for about two years," G told them, smugly looking down his immense nose. "I kept the information in a hidden file, located on the hard drive of an incredibly old computer that no one else ever used anymore. However, last year, someone broke into my shop—you know, Duo, the warehouse—and hacked through it. They stole the files, and the information."

"I didn't even know we could do that. . ." Duo half-grumbled his response, snapping his fingers then and speaking up. "Wait a minute! But I thought that there was only one way that you could—"

"Yes, that's right, Duo," Doctor J was rubbing his palm over the head of his cane. "There is only one way that it's possible to have a Gundam operate at that level in space without needing to refuel. . ."

"But that's _not_ a possibility! Doctor J," Heero made a broad gesture in the air with one arm, eyes filling with worry. "Not even _you_ would design a Gundam with a nuclear generator! That's just insane. The probability of a malfunction resulting in the meltdown of the generator is too high. That would be like setting a bomb off in space; your pilot would be in the center of a miniature supernova waiting to happen. Not only that, but the radiation could leak out into the cockpit, resulting in mutations and delays in your pilot."

"We didn't make it," Professor G stated simply, setting his elbows up on the was a long silence, G's words sinking in. Finally, one of the researchers at the far end of the table spoke up, taking his glasses off and cleaning them on his jacket as he asked:

"But, if you didn't, then who did?"

* * *

Maru was sitting on the floor, cleaning his gun when Quatre came back in with dinner. He was singing softly to himself, some old tune that the other did not recognize, ignoring the blond in favor of the metal and oily rag in his hands. His companion smiled a little, sitting down next to him on the concrete.

"— _This train is bound for glory, this train. Oh, this train is bound for glory-don't take nothin' but the good and hon'ry; this train is bound for glory, this train_. . ."

"I. . .I got the list done," Quatre said it carefully, and Maru stopped, looking over to the pale Arab. "It's all done now. There are three hundred names here. Do you want me to prepare the shuttle, or would you like to do it?"

". . .Go ahead. They're your people, after all."

Quatre turned his head sharply at that, gaze falling on the Gundams in the far end of the hangar. Where had they gone so wrong? He wondered what had led to this crazy turn of events. Why was he here, doing this? Murder, genocide? That was not what he wanted. He wanted people to go through their lives, to be happy. To be naïve and have innocent ideals, the way that he once did before the war. So why. . .?

"Having doubts, again?" Maru set the gun down, wiped his hands off on his jeans and leaned back. "It's okay if you are, you know. You can talk to me."

"I. . .I just. . ." he fought to find the words, turning back to his friend with pained eyes. "Does it _have_ to be this way, Maru?"

"If you can't stomach my methods then just go home, Quatre."

"You know I don't mean it like that. . ." he trailed off, looking down at his hands. They had been washed clean, bright pink because he had scrubbed them raw, and still he could feel the blood on them, warm and slightly sticky. "I just. . . I'm scared. What if we're wrong?"

"That's a normal human reaction to change, Quatre; to be afraid. It's all right if you're human. I promise not to hold it against you."

". . .You're strange, Maru."

"I know."

The two young men were quiet for the span of several moments, and during that time Maru shifted so that he was now lying on his back, gazing up at the support beams that crossed the ceiling. Quatre soon followed suit.

"But we're not wrong, so you don't have to be scared unless you want to be," the other pilot looked over to him, a thoughtful kind of confusion evident in his expression as he sought to find the words that would best convey his ideas. "Do what you think is best; follow your instincts, and listen to your partner. Would Sandrock really let you kill without reason?"

"I guess you're right. . ." Quatre smiled, a nervous laugh escaping him as Maru started humming that same old tune again, ever so softly. "I mean, we're only killing the bad people, right?"

Maru did not answer, the lyrics to the song finding their way out of his mouth:

" _Get on board, get on board. . . Get on board this gospel train_. . ."


	10. Plan Nothing

The break room had not changed much since the last time Heero had been in the facilities. It was still done in a harsh, monochromatic style: white tile floor and black coffee-maker resting on the pristine countertop that stretched from one end of the far wall to the other. There was a table in the middle of the room—long, like the one in the conference room—but it was also done in black, destroying the illusion that it had been made with real wood. To one side of the room, the side he currently had his back to, was a dark couch, pressed up against the wall with a matching chair beside it. But it was that dark table at which Heero was sitting, looking down at an ashtray he had found earlier as he worked his way through his fourth cigarette. Trowa was leaning against a set of cabinets, tossing his cell phone from hand to hand as he and Wufei conversed in low tones, the latter toying idly with a teabag.

"This sucks. I mean, really and truly _sucks_ ," it was Duo— _again_ —loudly complaining for what seemed like the millionth time in the past four minutes. "Can _somebody_ tell me why the hell we have to leave so that the 'grown-ups' can talk by themselves? This is _so_ stupid. It's stupid and prejudice, that's what it is. Like they think that just 'cause we're not a bunch of crazy old farts we're not _good enough_ to help out!" The American slammed his hand down on the tabletop, and Heero watched the ash crumble as the light tremor ran through the imitation wood.

"Well, we're still fucking useful, damn it! Just because the war's over doesn't mean you get to hold out on us, ya damn cranky bastards!"

"Enough, Duo!" Heero finally snapped around his smoke. He removed the cigarette from his mouth, holding it loosely between fore- and middle finger, thumb tapping the butt-end impatiently. "Will you just shut up already?"

"Hey, I don't hear any of _you_ guys _rushing_ to fill the silence right now."

"What's wrong, Duo; dead air threatening to trigger your shellshock?"

"Why you sonofa—"

"Duo, Heero!" Wufei raised his hands in exasperation, starting to play mediator between the two. He set the teabag down on the countertop next to a mug he had been preparing to fill with hot water, black eyes narrowing sharply as he scolded them. "We did not come here so that you two could start bickering. We have more important things to be worried about right now."

"What, you mean like what we're going to do if G is telling the truth?" Heero looked up through the twisting haze of his cigarette. He shifted his attention back down so that he was watching the smoke instead of his fellow pilots. "Even if we know what's going on and who's destroying those colonies, it's not like there's a whole lot we can do about it."

"Hey. . ." Duo licked his lips as though they had suddenly gone dry, standing and starting to pace along his side of the table. "There are still plenty of things we can d—"

"Like _what_ , Duo?" came the terse response, Wing's pilot also rising from his seat. "It's not like we can just waltz out there and _find_ him. And even if we _could_ find that little shit, what are we going to do, hmn? _Our_ Gundams were all _destroyed_ , remember? We blew them up for the sake of _peace_ and _humanity_."

"Bitter much, soldier-boy?"

"Is that the best you can come up with? Give me a break," he brushed his bangs out of eyes with his free hand, taking another drag of his cancer-stick.

"Oh not you _too_ , Heero. . ." Wufei groaned, picking his coffee mug up off the counter. "You guys need to just knock it off—"

"Stay out of this, Wufei," Duo warned him, glaring death and daggers at the young man across from him.

"Hey—"

" _Shut up_!" they yelled, voices blending together slightly. Heero took a long drag from his cigarette, finishing it off and flicking the ash to the floor. The four of them were silent, tension rising, building and spilling out along the subtle currents like waves, ripples of near-tangible heat. Hands inched towards their weapon, and the American knew that if these words came to blows, at least two of those guns would be on him. His situation had gone from calm complaint to hellishly dangerous at a surprising speed.

Trowa was the first to move. A few buttons pressed on his cell phone, and it began to ring, the tone high-pitched, some arrangement of notes that seemed vaguely familiar to Duo. He hummed the tune along with it, oblivious to them all. The Asians took one look at each other, Wufei offering a shrug and apologetic smile as Heero sat back down. Duo laughed, folding his hands behind his head, fingers laced on the back of his neck.

"Scorpions, Trowa? I knew you liked classics, but I thought that meant Beethoven, or something," he commented, forcing that playful quality into his voice, trying not to sound as nervous as he felt. Wufei went back to making his tea, taking deep calming breaths as he did so.

". . . _The Winds of Change_. It's one of my favorites."

"Izzat so? Huh, who'd-a thunk it, right?"

There was another long pause, Trowa taking that time to turn his cell phone back off. When he finally looked there was a question apparent in those once-green eyes. "Why _did_ you call us all here, Duo? Was it G's idea, some new plan or plot of his? Why not enlighten us."

"Yeah, considering you've just fucked over my one day off."

"Glad I've managed to accomplish at least one of my goals."

"Eat shit and die, Maxwell."

"Stop baiting each other," Trowa's command was cold, detached with military precision. He began tossing the phone between his hands again. "Answer the question, Duo."

He was quiet for a long moment, the silence interrupted only by the sound of boiling water being poured. Duo put on his best grin, eyes going over Trowa quickly in search of a weapon. "You know why; I told you all when I called. I wanna find the terrorists, and I want to stop them."

"How?" it was Wufei's turn to rejoin the conversation, and he did so with more than just a liberal amount of suspicion.

"The Preventers." This was met by groans from the two Asians, and Heero threw the cigarette filter that he was still holding onto the table in disgust.

"That's it? _That's_ your master plan?"

Duo's smile fell, his hands following suit to allow him to gesture broadly. "Look, no one else is doing or going to do anything about this. It was the best that I could come up with on such short notice."

"You're still a Preventer, Duo? I thought that you went back to the junkyard."

"Yeah, well. . .that's my day job, okay?"

"Aren't they being convicted of coercion and trying to spread anarchy throughout the colonies right now? I seem to remember there being talk of communists in the higher branches of the organization, as well," Trowa noted boredly, glancing down at his phone as if it were much more interesting.

"Well, I'll tell Noin and Hilde that you think they're terrorists, Trowa," came the jeer, one rough hand finding its way to Duo's hip, where it rested with a thumb through the belt loop of his jeans. "They're considered terrorists because they have weapons and they use them, but that's not what's _really_ going on. The Preventers are the ESUN's scapegoat: if something goes down or gets out, it's _always_ the Preventers' fault. You have no idea how many members have been disavowed and later sniped to keep everything quiet."

"Let me get this straight," Heero leaned back in his seat, fingers drumming the imitation wood of the table. "The ESUN created the Preventer-program to eliminate the threat of other groups who still had weapons, and then turned around to cover their collective asses by instigating questions about whether or not the Preventers were also terrorists because they were well-equipped, and _now_. . .what, you want us to join back up with them to help take out some nutcase in a walking nuke?"

". . .I _hate_ how you put it, but essentially. . .yeah."

"Fuckin' great," another scowl of disgust, sarcasm dripping from his every word, and Heero pushed himself away from the table. "Yeah, that sounds _exactly_ like the way _I_ want to be labeled for the rest of my life."

"You know, I don't remember you cursing this much, or really talking, during the war. Guess people really do change in peace, huh?"

The gun was in his hand before any of them quite knew what was happening, the safety off and Duo found himself looking down the business end from across the table. Heero was shaking violently, his breath coming in too fast, ragged like he might hyperventilate any second now. Trowa pulled his gun as well, targeted Heero and waited. A moment later, and Heavyarms's pilot felt cold metal at the base of his neck, mentally chiding himself for the mistake. He had forgotten about Wufei. _How_ could he _forget_ about _Wufei_?

"I'm a civilian, Duo. I'm not a soldier, I'm not a pilot, I don't do espionage, and I sure as hell don't do this war conspiracy bullshit anymore, but I _will_ kill you if provoked—so help me _God_ —now just shut up and sit down. You've got no room and no right to criticize the man I've become."

Duo raised his empty hands slowly, palms forward in show of surrender. "A'ight. I hear ya, Heero. You're right, I'm wrong," he spoke slowly, the way a person might try to talk to a rabid animal, cautiously. "So. . .how about you just put that thing away before you do something you're gonna—"

"Going to _what_ , Duo? _Regret_?" he spat the word out like it was something vile, his hand still unsteady. "You think I'd regret killing you? Do you think I've gone soft, is that it?!"

"That's not what I said, okay?"

"Can't we just talk this out like adults?" it was Wufei, trying to bring some semblance of reason or sanity back into the room. His attempt failed and Heero gripped his own wrist with his free hand, arm ramrod straight and trembling.

"Fuck this shit."

He pulled the trigger.


	11. Accept Nothing

Duo was not sure if the moment called for the _Ave Maria_ or the _Pater_ , but he figured that as long as he was on his knees and his lips were moving, God would get the general idea. He was trying to pray. And maybe he did not know if he was asking for forgiveness or salvation, or just finally getting around to giving the Big Man Upstairs a heartfelt 'thank you.' Whatever his purpose, it was hard for Duo to pray. The last time he had tried to humble himself before the eyes of God he had been laying Father Maxwell to rest in the ruins of a Catholic church.

Needless to say, prayer was a painful, ugly affair for him.

But, lo and behold, Duo remembered how, and even remembered the old Catholic mantras from his childhood; could even say the damn things in _Latin_ , of all dead languages. He was surprised, shocked to find the ancient words falling from his trembling lips. His tongue caught on some of the syllables, twisted them into entirely different sounds. He could not speak Latin, and he sounded very, _very_ American when he tried.

None of that, though, was of any real importance to Duo as he knelt, hands clasped awkwardly in front of his face, mouth brushing his fingers every time he moved. He was just happy to be alive, and solemnly swore to God—whether he actually had any intentions of keeping this promise, even _he_ did not know—that he would never again 'piss off another schiz-trip Jappo' so long as said Asian had access to a weapon of any kind.

"—Look, Trowa: I said I was sorry. What more do you want?"

"You almost blew my _fucking_ brains out, Wufei! ' _Sorry_ ' just doesn't cut it!"

Ah, yes. Reality. Duo opened his eyes slowly, his vision met by the edge of the black table. He could hear two of the three others in the break room, and he could not help but smile, some of the fear and tension dissipating with the expression's arrival. Nothing could shatter the mood quite like two grown men bickering like little old ladies.

"Well, _excuse me_ for not knowing that you had so much to live for."

"You _shot at me_."

Trowa seemed to be having a tough time accepting the fact that Wufei had nearly killed him. It must have been the first time outside of a Gundam that the two of them had had a confrontation ending in violence, Duo decided as he stifled a very relieved chuckle.

"And you were going to shoot Heero! Besides, you are overreacting, and blowing this _completely_ out of proportion."

"Whose side are you on, anyway?"

"Side? Why does it always have to be about sides and loyalties with you people?!" Wufei had thrown his hands up in exasperation, and then crossed them angrily over his narrow chest, awaiting an answer. Duo pulled himself to his feet, trying to get his bearings once more as he surveyed the room for damage.

Trowa and Wufei were standing on the other side of the table, facing each other as they argued. A prone figure lay at their feet, messy brown hair and too-smooth hands a dead give-away. The perfect soldier, Heero Yuy, lay unconscious on the tiled floor with his weapon tucked into the waistband of Wufei's pants. The tall redhead and remaining Asian still had their firearms in hand.

"Maybe it's because you're a back-stabbing traitor, ever think of that?"

"Ooo. . . Don't you even _start_ bringing war crimes into this, little boy."

"Little boy?" Trowa spat the words incredulously, like he could not believe what he had just heard. "I'm two years older than you, you snot-nosed little brat."

"Uhm. . .is anyone dead?" Duo posed the question as carefully and eloquently as he possibly could, given the current situation.

" _Not yet_ ," they said it in perfect unison, glaring death and daggers at one another. Duo let out a long, tired sigh. This was going to be a very, _very_ long day. . .

* * *

 

"You know, it's said that _perfect happiness is the absence of happiness_ ," Maru commented idly, plunking down next to Quatre on the floor of the frigate storage unit. He shifted a little on the cold metal, trying to get comfortable before abandoning that effort in favor of continuing. "A very smart individual, Chuang Tzu, said that once. I think that I agree with him, don't you?"

". . .You really like quoting people, don't you?"

"Of course," Maru snorted, as if the answer to question was obvious and the question off-topic. He nudged his pale companion with his shoulder, rocking the Arab and nearly shoving the smaller boy over. " _The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten_ —"

"Another Chuang Tzu?" Quatre interjected, glancing up from his list. Maru did not even skip a beat as he finished:

"— _Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words? He is the one I would like to talk to_ ," Maru offered him a smile, nodding slightly. "I like quoting dead people. Chuang Tzu, Tao te Ching, Lao-tzu, Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Confucius. . . All of them were very good, very smart men. They deserve to be remembered."

"They do?"

"Yes," the young man looked over to the boy, ruffled the uncombed tangle of blond hair somewhat affectionately, the way an older brother might. "They do. They've earned their immortality in the eyes of God, regardless of which God they worshipped. You see, God may not be forgiving, but that doesn't mean that He doesn't understand. Some people just don't have the opportunity to know God. That isn't their fault, and He won't hold it against them. He punishes the Wicked, but not always the Ignorant."

"Oh. . . That's good to know, I guess. What's the next stop?"

"C-1013, L1 colony cluster. We should. . .arrive tomorrow."

There was a long pause, and Maru sighed hopelessly, standing up again and studying the Gundams in the room with them. Quatre's blue-eyed gaze followed suit shortly after, though his brows were knit in confusion at the sudden change in the young man. What was wrong now? He was so tired of this; this running from colony to colony, and all the death and pain that he knew they were causing. Doubt filled his every thought, and he found that it was only getting harder to follow his friend's orders. Everyday, he awoke to himself wanting to ask when it would end.

"What's the matter, Maru?"

"You're not a very religious person, are you, Quatre?"

"I believe in Allah—"

"But do you _really_ believe in _anything_ , anymore?" Maru shook the hair from his smoky brown eyes, turning to the other with a look of pain evident in the quiver of his bottom-heavy lips. "You seem. . .almost lifeless. You're wandering without purpose!"— he cut the air in front of him with a broad, sweeping gesture of his arm. —"Don't you get it, Quatre? _We are here to embody the transcendent_! So why is it that you deny it? Why do you cut yourself off from life, from the ability to feel? You are _dying_ inside because you can't bring yourself to accept what needs to be done."

". . .That's harsh, Maru, and it isn't—"

"Isn't what? Isn't true?" he turned sharply, stalked back over and snatched the list from Quatre's relaxed hands. "You want truth? I'll tell you a truth: a man cannot carry out God's will if he does not believe in God, Quatre. I am on a holy mission, given to me by both the Creator and God Himself. If you are not with me in this mission, then you are nothing more than a murderer at my side. The purpose will justify and excuse our methods, but there will be no salvation for the man who kills without reason."

". . .What if I don't know _how_ to believe? Will your God understand _that_?" he snapped back angrily.

"They say that _seeing is believing_ , Quatre. And you are about to get a vision from the Lord Almighty. Now get up."


	12. Know Nothing

His body felt heavy, cold and numb as his mind tried to swim back up through the murky waters of unconsciousness. He could not feel his fingers or legs, but throbbing throughout his being was a chilling ache. It was not an unfamiliar feeling, and he recognized it instantly from his days as a soldier. Shock. His body was in shock, was trying to deny the smell of gun powder in the air and the blood on the floor. There was glass under one of his hands, tiny shards suspended in the sweat on his neck. They were sharp, but he only knew that from the training which was currently taking over, processing the damage like some computer's cheap virus scan.

One minor head wound, scalp sliced open in the back, slightly off centered. His attacker had come at him from somewhere off to his right. A concussion was unlikely, but still possible. He twitched, a small convulsion of the hand. The glass was stuck in his hair, a thin piece still embedded in his head.

But he could do nothing about it. He could not move or speak yet, could only lay there and wait to regain control as he listened to the hum and buzz of a conversation nearby. He could not follow it. Too fast, too many people; all he heard was endlessly droning noise. Slowly, he forced his mind to focus on distinguishing one voice from another. He tried breaking each voice down into the sentences that flew by, grasping desperately at words.

"—Wasn'tevenloadedwhatkindof fuckin'—"

"Calmdown, Duo, I'msurethatthere'sanexplanation—"

"Damn it, Wufei!" a thump, like a fist coming down on hard plastic. Like someone punching the table or countertop. "Someone could have _died_."

"Really? Gee, I must not have noticed." There was sarcasm in the voice, and the young man on the floor was surprised that he was able to recognize it so readily. Again he stirred, hands sliding through the debris around him to stop at either side of his chest. He was waiting for the strength to push himself up. There was a pause in the argument as the others in the room turned to watch him.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Heero," it was Trowa's voice, coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the counter. Heero gasped as he got to his knees, a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea assaulting his senses. He opened his eyes and was momentarily blinded, blinking rapidly as he tried to adjust. No one made a move to help him. Gingerly, he raised a hand to touch the back of his head, fingers red and sticky as they slid through his blood-soaked hair.

" _Nan_. . ." he licked his lips, trying to remember the words in English. His brain felt fuzzy, hazy as if he had just woken up with a bad hangover. "Wha. . .what happened?"

There was a long pause. Duo shifted uncomfortably where he stood, Wufei mumbled something about looking for a first aid kit and headed for the counter. Trowa began playing with his cell phone again, tossing it from hand to hand. He stopped long enough to turn it back on, and then continued. It was mesmerizing, in a way, to watch the sleek device travel through the air, and Heero allowed his eyes to follow its motions. Left to right to left, and back again.

"Hey, Heero," Duo sat down on the table, hands gripping the edge tightly. Wufei knelt beside Wing's former pilot, opening the first aid kit he had found. "Why wasn't it loaded?"

"What're you talking about?" the words were coming easily now, the shock and battle fatigue wearing off at an incredible speed. Still, he did not feel well, and he did not like the way the American's question had sounded. Wufei put a hand on his shoulder, his other gently probing for the glass. Heero winced.

"Your gun. Why wasn't it loaded?"

Heero growled, only partially from the pain of having the glass removed from his scalp. "It's fucking peacetime, you moron. We're not even supposed to _own_ firearms anymore, and you think I'd walk around with it _loaded_? What kind of psychotic maniac do you think I am?"

" _I'm_ a moron? You were bluffing and it could have gotten both you _and_ Trowa killed, you goddamn—"

"Oh, so now I suppose that it's _my_ fault that Wufei and Trowa are fucking sociopaths?"

"Heero, if you keep moving, I'm never going to get this all out—"

"I am _not_ a _sociopath_ , you little shit!"

"Stop messin' around, man—"

Soon, they were all back to arguing again, screaming at each other from their respective places around the break room. Wufei was dousing a cloth with peroxide as he shouted at Duo, told Deathscythe's pilot to stop being the goddamn instigator of these fights and just shut up. Duo's response consisted of 'sit on it and spin, you Chink-a-nese fucktard.' The cloth was applied roughly to the back of Heero's head. Cursing the sting and burn that followed, the Japanese pilot gritted his teeth, though he was uncertain if he was repressing the urge to lash out at his fellow Asian or the violent redhead flinging heavy insults that hit far too close to home for his comfort.

"Murderer!"

"Monster!"

"Shut up!"

"Traitor!"

The door was slammed open then, knob embedding itself in the plaster wall behind it. Silence descended upon the four pilots like a sudden sickness, harsh words dying instantly upon their lips. Standing in the doorway with dark glares and disapproving frowns were the scientists, arms crossed over their chests as they surveyed the room. Heero looked down guiltily, bowing his head under the pretense of allowing Wufei better access to the wound. He clenched his fists, uneven nails cutting shallow crescents into his palms, a single plea thrashing around the inside of his skull: _Please don't let him know I'm scared_.

"What is going on here?" Doctor J was asking the question, the sound of his prosthetics grinding as he walked in, accompanied by the dull thud of his cane against the carpet. It was followed by footsteps as the other scientists filed in after him. They stood like gods, an angry pantheon of unholy war, above their charges. Heero began to stammer an apology:

"I. . .I. . .D-Doctor J, I—"

"It's nothing," Duo interrupted, shooting his peers a dirty look in case they were thinking of contradicting him. "Now can we get back to work? We've still got a lot of shit to figure out."

"Well, I appreciate your concern, Duo, but. . ." a brief pause in speaking, G coughing discretely into his hand before continuing. "But we already know 'what', 'who', and 'why'. We're just a little skeptical on that whole 'where is he headed' and 'how do we stop him' business, that's all."

Surprise colored the faces of the pilots, all of them staring with openmouthed disbelief at the smug professor. Duo stood, stepping away from the table on unsteady feet.

"What the hell are you talking about?" the American was the first to recover, snapping the question angrily. "Stop holding out on us, you crotchety old geezer!"

"Your rage will lead us no closer to catching this villain," Master O regarded them carefully. The statement—or was it a warning?—was said in that slow, thoughtful manner which made it sound like an ancient proverb of sorts; made it seem like a startling revelation he had come to after years of hard training and deep meditation. Wufei _hated_ it when Master O used that tone.

"Well?" the young China man asked after another lapse into silence, patting Heero's shoulder as he finished wrapping the wound. "Do you plan on _sharing_ this new and _vitally_ _important_ information with us?"

He was answered by a nod from the doctor, and the scientists turned to the door. S led H back out, an arm around the instructor's hunched and shivering shoulders, murmuring soothing words in Russian every now and then.

"I hope," he said quietly, taking a moment to eye the younger men. "That you boys remember how to pilot Mobile Suits. Because we are going to need some very, _very_ big guns for this."

"We'll explain everything as head over to the containment rooms. Unless, of course, you need us to stop by the medical facilities so you can lie down, Heero."

"N-no, that. . .that's all right, Doctor J. I-I'm fine."

"Good."

They stepped out into the hallway, a nervous and faithless tension settling like smog over the group. Heero placed his hand on the wall, using it to help him walk. He was starting to feel a little dizzy again, a little disoriented as they were led down several winding, bright corridors. They stank of unscented disinfectant; of old memories that he could not—that he _would not_ —bring himself to remember or name. Each hall looked more and more like the previous, and Heero could not stop himself from beginning to fall behind. He did not want to go down here, did not want to venture into the depths of the compound.

He did not want to revisit the containment rooms.

His memories of them were flaky, at best. Mostly, he remembered the sounds; could still hear his boyish screams echoing across those metal walls, his hands—so tiny and weak back then—pounding on the knob less, hinge less door in hopes of finding sanctuary. He could still hear the sickening crunch and snap of bone when something broke, the lifeless thud of his own limp body hitting the floor when they told him to heal. The sound of silence, of Doctor J's voice distorted by the intercom system and telling him that he was

_(worthless, you hear me?)_

only being given an hour of rest and then it was back to more training.

"Heero, how old were you in your first memories?"

"I. . .wha—?" his teeth came down hard on his tongue, killing the question before it had time to fully form. He forced himself to take two deep, calming breaths before answering J. "I'm not sure. Six, maybe seven. Why?"

"Then you'll have no idea what I'm talking about," Doctor J said it with a sigh, shaking his head. "The man we're looking for is a former subject of ours. Mostly mine, and Professor G's."

"You're going to have to give us the details at some point, so you might as well make it now," Trowa pointed out.

"True enough," J led them around another sharp corner, stifling a series of hoarse coughs before he began. "He was a part of the Zero System Project, known only as subject designation _XXG-ZSP-00_. We bought him in the August of 177, almost a full year after Wing Zero's actual completion. He was to be trained _specifically_ for the operation of the Zero System; we had not been able to find a pilot who was capable of surviving the first test run and so decided that we would simply have to _manufacture_ our own. Unfortunately, the child turned out to be disturbed and unbalanced. He began. . .malfunctioning during training sessions early on in 181.

"Soon after, Project Zero was officially disbanded. That was. . ." he stopped, thinking hard. "December of 181? Or March of '82?"

"One-eighty-two," O reassured the good doctor, quickly adding. "June, actually."

"Ah yes, June of 182. Zero-zero had become completely unstable by that point. He would go into violent fits and seizures, sometimes rambling about his vivid hallucinations. Apparently, we 'overloaded his fragile psyche, and disrupted the stages of mental growth required for maintaining a healthy, functioning human being with prolonged exposure to the Zero system.' Or at least, that was the diagnosis from the clinical psychologist on our staff. Regardless, the subject was deemed useless for the time being and placed in quarantine for restabilization."

"Why?" Heero's mouth was unexplainably dry, his words rasping painfully in his throat. J canted his head to one side, but did not stop walking. A tremor ran down Heero's arm, and he had to force down the urge to apologize for interrupting. He only hoped that the doctor was not angry with him.

"Because I had already begun work on Wing Gundam, and I wanted to retrain him for that. He was only useless 'for the moment.' I did not assume that the damage was so permanent that it could not be overcome by my particular brand training. But he proved himself to be broken beyond all repair, and I set him aside to continue work on subject designation _XXG-ZSP-01_ , whom we had—" he paused at a cough from S, glancing over at the other scientists as he quickly moved to correct himself. "Whom _I_ had acquired in the April of 181 to train as a substitute for Zero-zero."

"They were both kept in this facility," Professor G gestured to a set of large double doors ahead as he spoke. They were thick and metallic, silver and knob less with a keypad on the wall to the left. "Completely different rooms, of course; I doubt that they ever saw each other."

"Only once, as far as I can remember," mused the doctor, tapping the pass code in on the keypad to open the doors. "I kept Zero-zero just in case Zero-one proved faulty or was killed before completing his mission. After all, a deranged child is better than nothing, and he was more than capable of piloting something as rudimentary as Wing Gundam."

"But Zero-one did complete his mission, and after the war ended, there was really no need to keep Zero-zero. I released him under the condition that he was not to harm anyone, and told him to try to live. . .like a normal human being. He was still rather unstable, but he seemed to be making quite a bit of progress in his emotional and mental development. I thought that human contact might do him some good."

The doors opened, and they walked into another long corridor, this one spotted with those same knob less doors on either side, electronic keypads always to the left. Doctor J led them further down the hall, a little short on breath but continuing his story nonetheless.

"He, expectedly, rebelled against the idea, and immediately came back to me begging to be given some kind of mission to fulfill. I should not have been surprised; he had spent the entirety of his life in this compound, and most of that time was here in the containment rooms. He said that he could not live or die without having completed at least one mission from me, and that doing my will was his ultimate purpose in life, or some such nonsense. Anyway. . ." J trailed off, finally coming to a halt in front of a door on the right side of the hall, third from the end.

"So, you gave him a fake mission to get him to go away and now he's blowing up colonies?" Duo sounded more than just a little incredulous, rubbing at the back of his neck as he watched J type in the numerical code needed to open the door to Zero-zero's room. "Y'know, I feel like, even after all that, I'm still missin' something really important. Like where the _fuck_ he got a nuclear Gundam? 'Cause, y'know, that's a lot more relevant to our situation right now."

"Ah, that's where I come in," Professor G cleared his throat, pretending to be deeply involved in cleaning his nails with a paperclip as they waited. "The third and final frame of Wing Zero was hidden under a mining facility on an asteroid orbiting one of the L4 colony clusters, and the blue prints and information on the whereabouts of said Gundam were one of the things stolen from my computer several years ago. The other was my research on an old, nuclear Mobile Suit generator that supposedly predated the creation of both Wing Zero and the Tallgeese."

"Oh. Well, fuck."

"Wait, I want to know what happened to the other one," it was Wufei asking, arms crossed over his chest loosely, glaring at the back of J's head. "Zero-one, what did you do with him?"

"He moved up from subject to pilot, new designation _XXG-WP1-01W_ , and was used for Operation Meteor. Isn't that right, Zero-one?"

". . .Shut up."

Doctor J stopped with his hand hovering over the 'enter' key, looking over his shoulder at the shaky young man who had spoken. Heero slammed his fist into the wall, his body racked by the quick, uneven breaths that he drew in. The skin of his knuckle split, and blood began to slide down the slick surface that it still rested against, heading for the floor as he shook his head violently.

"Just shut up!" he screamed the words, could feel his vocal cords protesting the abuse. "That's not what happened, that's not _how_ it happened! I was a goddamn person before you picked me up off the street; I remember things and people and places before I ever came to this fucking colony! _I wasn't born for this_!"

That revelation came as a surprise to even Heero, who could not see past the tears that clouded his vision. That made the world blurry and indistinct. He did not want to have been born for such a bloody purpose, could not imagine the level of inhumanity needed to force such a cruel destiny upon him. It hurt him to hear Doctor J's story, ripped the heart he had worked so hard for out, dropped it to the ground and crushed it beneath a heavy boot. The sob that escaped him was hoarse, wet and ragged. Broken.

"It's a lie. It's a lie, it's a lie it's a lie," he chanted the words like a mantra, some bizarre prayer to an even stranger god. He kept his head down, squeezing his eyes shut as if perhaps his childish insistence would force the doctor to take it all back. To leave the door and let him run away, far far away until the sounds and the smells and the god-awful _sights_ of the containment facilities were behind him. Let him run away from all the bad bad memories that were fighting so desperately through years of abuse and training to be realized once more.

But Doctor J said nothing, did nothing. He just stood there, still as death. Heero whimpered, feeling those cold eyes behind the metal sheens burrowing through his skin, tearing him apart little by little. Forcing him to remember. There was no life prior to the compound, to the doctors and scientists with their long needles and solemn clipboards. There was no father, no mother, no Odin Lowe who took care of him when he was younger. No warm, steady hand over his own, teaching him how to hold and fire a gun. There was no hope that he would, or could, ever go back to a life before blood had stained his hands and his mind had been honed to apathy. There were only the white white rooms with their coldly inhuman machines and fearless men of science and rebellion.

He knew, of course, that Doctor J would not respond. Doctor J never responded to his tears, to his emotional outbursts. He used to tell him that those things were useless, those childish emotions of his. Then he would pull out the wires and the patches, two small electrode pads lined with tiny hooks like leech teeth, would slap them onto his temples and turn the shocks up as he brushed the sweat from Heero's shaved scalp. Yes, that always was J's way, his 'particular brand of training.' He could still feel the way the electricity would rack his tiny frame, tear through his body and leave him twitching uncontrollably.

Nonetheless, Heero did not want to admit that any of that was real.

". . .And why does it _have_ to be a lie now, Heero?" J's question caught him off guard, and he finally looked up, slate-blue gaze locked onto the old man. Why? Why? Because anything else would drive him mad, would mean that he was nothing more than a substitute monster for the good doctor's personal freak show.

"Because. . ." he struggled for some reason that he could give voice to, the logical explanation that J demanded. He found it after a moment, and it came out in a rushed exhalation. "Because I'm only nineteen; I wasn't even _born_ in '81."

"Actually," Doctor J hit the final key, watching as the door slid open, a hint of amusement finding its way into his tone. "You'll be twenty-one in April."


	13. Achieve Nothing

April.

That month jumped out at him, made him twitch, tilt his head to one side in confusion. He sniffed, wiping at his runny nose. April. Some part of him thought that it was absurd, impossible. He was an orphan, his mind tried to reason through the emotional haze, through the rampant insanity of the moment. Orphans did not have birthdays. No one, Doctor J included, should have known whether or not he was born in April. The month of April should not have mattered.

"How. . .how do you know that?" he asked, his voice soft and muted with a strange and incomprehensible fear. He did not notice the open door, did not care to look inside. His fellow pilots peered in cautiously; feigning disinterest towards the young man's troubled past out of loyalty, some unspoken creed in masculine conduct. Trowa, G, and Duo excused themselves, stepping into the room to give Heero and the good doctor some time alone. S would have followed them had Instructor H not weakly protested against it. Looking to J helplessly, the other doctor led the instructor back down the hall towards the break room, signaling to O for assistance when the shaky old man stumbled. Wufei was left in the hall just in case things got out of hand.

"Your mother was on the staff," J explained casually, as if perhaps discussing funding or some other terribly dull but unavoidable topic linked to his facilities. He did not acknowledge the actions of the others. "She was in charge of research on long-term effects of the Zero System on the juvenile psyche."

". . .Why?" he struggled to form the word, to force his lips to move. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. "Wh-why did she. . .?" He could not bring himself to finish that sentence.

"I think you've misunderstood me, Heero. Your mother did not 'donate' you to the cause of science; she _had_ you for the sole purpose of providing us with a qualified substitute for Zero-Zero. I picked your father out of a catalogue, so to speak, in hopes of creating a genetically superior subject."

"Her name." It was not a question. It was a command, a terse and cold order as Heero straightened, glaring death and daggers at the doctor.

"Junichiro Yukira."

"Is she still alive?" he was breathless, hopeful. Something in the name sounded familiar. He knew he had heard it before. Junichiro. Perhaps he could meet her, could ask her why she had given him to J. The idea of putting this woman—this _stranger_ , the woman he had dreamed of and imagined for years—through a guilt trip, of making her feel absolutely miserable, was surprisingly appealing.

"No," Doctor J looked down somewhat apologetically, sadly toying with the head of his cane. "Poor girl died just last year in a car accident. It was terrible. She was only forty-five."

There was silence, marred only by their breathing. Heero could have sworn he actually heard his hopes shatter one by one like fragile glass, wondering through a heavy blanket of shock if perhaps his sanity would follow suit. It was just too much. If only J had told him sooner, he could have gone to see her; could have met this elusive Junichiro.

"I'll kill you," he told the old man, trying to take a step towards him. He knew what he would do now: he would strangle that man, wind that goddamn cane around the bastard's neck. Teach the fucker not to play with other people's lives. But Wufei was stopping him, strong arms wrapped around his ribcage to hold him back. A frustrated cry escaped him as he struggled to break free. "Fine! I'll kill you _both_ , you hear? I'll _fucking_ kill you!"

"H-hold on, Heero! Maybe she has relatives? Or-or _something_?" the suggestion sounded desperate, a question directed at J. The good doctor nodded absently.

"Her father's still alive."

Heero stopped abruptly.

"M-my grandfather?"

"Oh, yes. Your grampa." The stress on the final word was hardly noticeable, a slight emphasis that Heero barely caught. His mouth worked silently for a moment and he shook his head. This was not happening. This _could not_ be happening. The metal monster before him was unreadable, suggesting impossibilities.

There was no way. Heero tried to convince himself of this. There was no way that Doctor J could be serious. He remembered as a little boy—a very, very little boy—hearing that word, saying that word. Grampa. He remembered the shocks, the heavier-than-normal flow of electricity that would rush through him as punishment for using that word. He remembered the screaming

_(not your grandfather—)_

and the sick gurgle he would make in the back of his throat when his brain shut down and he forgot how to speak. Heero started shaking, remembering the feeling of his head slamming back onto the cold concrete floor when the seizure would take hold. He remembered hearing Doctor J

_(Call me that again and I'll get rid of you I'll just replace you—)_

telling one of his assistants to put something in his mouth so he would not swallow his tongue. He remembered being afraid, and tried to remind himself that it was just a memory.

"No," he said, fighting for control of his emotions, battling with himself to keep them off his face and out of his eyes. "No. You're lying again."

"No, Heero, I'm not lying. . ." the good doctor stifled a series of coughs with his hand, looking to the boy with a small smile. Heero thought it made him look sinister, somehow vicious and evil in the harsh hall light. "What, after all, do you think 'J' stands for?"

* * *

 

"The fuck is this?" Duo cursed, his voice too loud in the quiet room, mouth left open as he stared at the walls. Old newspaper clippings covered the white walls, tabloid articles circled and highlighted; thick streaks from a black grease pen scrawled over the tops and in the gaps where the concrete still showed through. There was tape everywhere, holding up the brightly colored strings connecting one chaotic set of articles to another. A Bible had been torn apart and its pages were spread along the floor, over the desk and taped up next to a picture of the Crucifixion on the wall. Part of Revelations was underfoot, and Duo quickly stepped away, batted down the urge to cross himself, or pray, or. . .or something. Instead, he moved closer to the right wall, peering at group of articles; black and white photos with smudged and unreadable news or gossip beneath. He was surprised to find that this set—marked by a red highlighter and string that connected it to another similar arrangement—was about him.

All of it was about him. The papers dated back to the start of his involvement in the war, to the first sightings of Deathscythe in AC 194. Most were from the year after, when he had been labeled a terrorist and threat to colonial society, called a disturbance of the peace and war monger. There were notes scribbled into the margins; opinions of the reader and the chapter and verse of some Scripture that justified it. Duo did not recognize the numbers, did not comprehend any importance that they might have had.

A humorless smile crossed his face as his fingertips touched upon the surface of one of the photographs. It was a blurry and unfocused shot of him and Hilde from when they had lived together on L2 a few years ago. How many had it been? Three, four years? He did not quite remember. But he did remember the incident, in all its glory. He even remembered the reporter who had taken the photo; remembered smashing the man's face in against the charred frame of a busted car in the junkyard out back. Those were good times.

Trowa was also gawking, though not so much at the individual photos as at the sheer number of meticulously cut articles, all of which seemed to have something to do with one of the former Gundam pilots. Duo's were marked by red, his own by green, Wufei's division was done with classic neon yellow, and the ones dealing with Quatre were streaked by blue. Heero's were unmistakable; corded off as they were from the rest and enclosed by a stretch of black yarn and ink. The only thing that any of these writings had in common, as far as he could tell, was their connection to one of the five mentioned. Some were reports on the dealings and business of the Winner Corporation; others talked about terrorists and bombings possibly linked to the Preventers. A philosophical theory proposed by their Chinese companion lay scattered across the floor, with a copy Relena's acceptance speech nearby.

"Hey. . .hey, Trowa, do you _see_ this?" Duo pointed to a spot on the back wall by his current position. "There's somethin' carved into the wall. It says"— and here he squinted for a moment, reading the scratchy English letters slowly —" _God has no religion_. What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"It's one of Gandhi's sayings," Professor G offered, leafing through a pile of papers on the desk against the left wall. Duo snorted lightly through his nose, running his fingers over the message. Gandhi? Well, that was certainly not something he had been expecting to find in the room of a genocidal maniac. Especially not one who pranced through space with a nuke under his butt.

"Weird. Look, there's some other stuff here, too."

"Like what?"

"Like more weird sayings, and stuff. Farther down the wall," the American explained, crouching to the level of the newly discovered quote. "Says, _forgetfulness of self is remembrance of God_. Then, next to it, it says, _Ego is sin. Lose Zero to become absolute Zero. Achieve true Nothing and enter Eternity_."

"I don't recognize it," G glanced to Trowa, who replied with a simple shrug, before returning his attention to Duo. "Does it say anything else?"

"Uh. . .something about Revelations, the Four Horsemen, and purging the universe of evil. You know, the usual corrupt loony mumbo-jumbo."

"Don't be a smart-ass," G sneered, poking idly at the cot in the far left corner of the room.

"Well, _excuse_ me, your highness."

"Enough, children," Trowa chided. "We're here to look for clues to Zero-Zero's whereabouts. Grow up, please. Especially you, _Professor_."

"Clues? You think he actually had a plan and left behind clues? This man is crazy. He's beyond crazy. Tell me how this is 'progress?'" Duo gestured to the room with a broad sweep of his arm. "Tell me how this obsessive, 'I'm gonna stalk people from my happy militant Tupperware box' is _progress_ —?"

"Please just shut up and get over it. . ." G sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his eyes with thumb and forefinger.

"—And what the hell made J think that letting this nut job loose was safe? Man, this is _so_ not safe," he huffed, scuffing the toe of his shoe on a clump of loose bible pages. His hands were dug deep into the pockets of his old jeans, his expression slightly sulky. "I just don't like being here and doing nothing, y'know?"

"Alright, alright," Trowa suppressed the urge to sigh as he turned to address the scientist. "Do we know what he was after? What exactly was the mission that J sent this guy on?"

"I believe he said it was 'to make sure that nothing like the Gundams could ever be created again,'" G offered helpfully, pointing upward as though emphasizing some grand new idea. "He told us while you were all taking a break."

"Then we need to check the map again. From what I saw, it looked like he was moving toward Earth, swinging wide to catch the other colonies on his way. That would put his next target somewhere on the outskirts of L1, wouldn't it?"

". . .C-1013. It's the first colony he'd encounter heading into this Lagrange point from that direction, and it's heavily connected to the production and development of Mobile Suits."

"But. . ." Duo stared at G, slack-jawed as he tried to collect his thoughts. They all knew what he was going to say, and it caused a sudden chill to fall over the men. He leaned back, swallowing hard before forcing the words out of his closed throat. "But that's us."

* * *

 

"Junichiro? Doctor _Junichiro_?" Heero said the name and title with disbelief, his wide eyes begging the old man to tell him it was not true. But J only sighed, his pronged fingers snapping together loudly.

"Yes, Heero," he coughed again, managed to wheeze out a better introduction. "I am Doctor Junichiro Daisuke. And before you ask the answer is no, you don't have a real name. Only the one you're using now."

Heero's legs felt weak, and he would have fallen when they failed him had Wufei not been holding him up from behind. He tried to cry, tried scream, but even his soul felt tired, dead; he had no more tears left for this. Dry sobs racked his body, his shoulders jerking and chest heaving. A broken, helpless wail escaped him.

Why was this happening? Why did it have to be this way? Why _him_? What ever happened to leading a normal life, to becoming human? That dream, that hope and life-quest seemed so far, forever out of reach. He had to face the truth now: he was nothing more than a substitute, just another toy soldier

_(I'll get better, Grampa—)_

in one of J's vicious games. Even the blood that flowed through his veins, that gave him strength and forced him to react to the world around him, had betrayed him. Doctor J's own kin? The thought sickened him, the perverse unfairness of it all left his mind reeling. He was denied even a purpose in life because of this relation. Because tools and weapons needed no reason for living.

_(I'll get it right for you)_

"You _sick fuck_ ," he choked on the words, unable to breathe. Wufei was saying something, was trying to calm him down but Heero could not hear him. Could not hear anything through the noise he was making. Could not see or even feel anything outside of himself. His throat, which should have been burning, raw and bleeding by now, had gone completely numb.

_(so please, please, Grampa—)_

Small hands after the surgery, reaching for J's pristine lab coat. The frail body of a little boy with slate-blue eyes, a faceless woman in the background. It took Heero a moment to realize that it was a memory, that he was capable of detaching from his past to the point of consciously projecting it. That little boy had to be him. His child self tugged at the white coat, looked up hopefully with parted lips and foolish adoration. There was a slight, raised discoloration at his temples, standing out on that naturally dark skin. Heero felt himself brush his fingers over the same place on his own temples, felt smooth and flawless epidermis but nothing else.

When had those scars left him, he caught himself wondering vaguely as the good doctor of memory turned away, called back over his shoulder to tell the woman to take 'that subject' back to the containment facilities. He watched the little boy scream, begging J to come back. Watched the boy call him 'Grampa,' and remembered trying so hard to be worthwhile. To be perfect so J would

_(tell me—)_

give him a kind word and an extra hour of rest. But no matter what he did, no matter how fast or how strong he was, no matter how many tests he passed, J was never satisfied. Never.

Heero blinked, rousing himself from his dazed reverie, lips curling back into a snarl as the initial feelings of shock and mourning slipped away. They gave rise to a fierce and boiling anger, to a bitter vengeance.

"Do I make you proud now, you fucking bastard?" he finished the question he had wanted to ask for the last fifteen years, spat it out with a nearly acidic sarcasm. "Will you throw me away _now_? Replace me? Kill me? Come on, _Grampa_ ; gimme another chance. Do you remember that?"

"Heero—"

" _I hate you_!" he screamed the words, and J fell silent. Heero was panting from the emotional exertion, from the adrenaline and animal instinct that told him to be afraid. He had not known that he would say that, did not expect himself to feel that way. It was strange, but he almost wanted to apologize. Almost wanted to say

_(I still love you, Grampa—)_

he did not mean it. But instead, he simply repeated the statement, whispered it like blasphemy in the face of God. "I hate you. . ."

Doctor J said nothing. The old man turned around and walked away, the grind of his prosthetics on the floor deafening in the suddenly quiet hallway. Wufei tightened his grip.

"Are you going to be all right, Heero?" the other pilot asked, cautiously, watching for the young man's reaction. Heero took a deep, shaky breath, and pushed away.

"No," he said, but he sounded calmer, like he was finally getting his control back now that the good doctor was leaving. "No, I don't think I'll ever be all right. But we have more important things to worry about. Come on."

Wufei nodded his approval, lightly patting Heero on the shoulder in a show of awkward camaraderie. They entered Zero-Zero's room then, both stopping just inside to look at the pale faces of their companions questioningly. Trowa was the first to move. He turned for the door, fumbling with his cell phone, hands oddly clumsy as he removed the device from his pocket.

"I need to make a call," he mumbled as he pushed past the two Asians, his throat tight and the words sounding too desperate as they left his mouth. If it had been anyone else, Duo would have described the redhead's actions as a passive form of panic. But this was still Trowa, and—regardless of how many years had passed—it seemed somehow wrong to think of him as the hysterical type. Instead, he decided that the other pilot just sounded sick, and probably needed to go somewhere private to vomit his guts out.

"What's going on?" Wufei asked rather nervously as he watched the door slide shut.

Meanwhile, Wing's former pilot made his way over to the cot in the corner, glancing up at the wall above it with narrowed eyes and a thoughtful frown. The pictures in this small, secluded section of the room were altered, mutilated; cut and pasted together like Frankenstein's monster. Here, Zero-Zero had cut off their heads, and placed them on the platters at the 'Last Supper'. In another, he had removed their arms, and hung them from a woodcutting of the Yggdrasil, the tree of life from Norse mythology. Tabloid photographs devoid of eyes were taped at eye level, the kanji for 'death' and 'hatred' in greasy black streaks across the glossy media. An old newspaper clipping, key words and phrases underlined by a thin strip of white, caught his eye, and that frown deepened. AC 192. . .? Heero started reading.

 _C-1013, L1 colony cluster. November 14th, AC 192. A series of high-powered explosives were set off at the UESA military training facilities on the corner of 52nd Street and Pine last night_. . .

"We think we're next on this wacko's hit-list."

"What? Are you serious?"

. . . _The bombs not only decimated the Alliance fort, killing approximately 200 recruits and officers, but also ignited the underground fuel line that the base shared with a nearby set of apartment complexes_. . .

"Yeah, man. It totally sucks," Duo whined, leaning back against one of the walls. "I don't know if the Preventers will be able to mobilize any kind of attack force in time, or even if it would do any good. I mean, what the hell do you use to fight a fuckin' Gundam and _win_?"

"Another Gundam, of course," G answered, smiling at the confused expressions he received. "S made a vague allusion to it earlier. Remember the 'big guns' comment?"

"All of our Gundams are gone," Wufei snapped, sifting through a stack of papers marked by yellow. Heero motioned for silence, but the other three were far too involved in their own discussion to notice such subtlety. "So unless you've been—"

"Oh, don't worry; I have," he interrupted with a wave of one hand. "And Duo, you'll be happy to know that I even brought him with me. He's an old friend that I know you've just been _dying_ to see again. . ."

"You made another Deathscythe? Are you outta your goddamn mind?"

. . . _Starting a gas fire that reduced these once magnificent homes to smoldering rubble. In a vain attempt to put out the blaze, the environmental controls were tapped, letting down the barrage of snow that still litters the ground this morning. The apartments were home to some 546 people. So far, 113 people have been retrieved from the wreckage and are currently in intensive care at St. Raphael's Hospital on 39th Street, and approximately 198 people are still unaccounted for_. . .

"Absolutely. Which, in this case, has proven to be a saving grace," the professor smoothed his mustache thoughtfully. "This'll be the perfect opportunity for me to test my brand-new, completely untouched, Deathscythe Hell Lucifer Custom. Oh, and S said that he could get a hold of an old Virgo and re-equip it for Barton to use. There was even mention of your beloved Altron coming back into service. So much for 'being gone,' don't you think, Wufei?"

"Go to hell," the pilot in question spat, lips curling back in an angry sneer. "Nataku was put to rest, and I promised that she would never see a battlefield again. So don't count on it."

The American forced a laugh, brushing his bangs up off his forehead for a moment before letting them fall back into place. "So, lemme get this straight: you wanna send the three of us out against Heero's obsessive big brother in an experimental Deathscythe, a suped-up Virgo, and Wufei's dead girlfriend? Shit, man. . . We are _so_ screwed."

"That would be the plan, yes."

"Just shut up and die. Both of you."

"You're such a grouch, 'Fei. You need to, like. . .get laid, or something."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Heero looked away from the article with a small shudder, wrapping his arms around himself protectively. He remembered that incident; that fire and the snow after. Remembered walking over those ruins, digging through the debris in hopes of finding. . .something, someone still alive. But there was no one there when he looked, no one left when he scraped his palms open on the rough concrete while he searched. He gave himself a moment to recollect himself, to put his thoughts in order as he listened to the remaining pilots dissolve into childish bickering. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism, an attempt to stay sane through this mess they had somehow gotten involved in. Whatever it was, it brought a dry, humorless smile to his face.

"What are we waiting for then?" he asked. The others blinked in surprise, their attention suddenly focused on him. Heero raised his chin defiantly, eyes narrowing dangerously as he spoke. "I say we get our guns, and show this sonofabitch how real men fight."


	14. Say Nothing

Slick hands traveled slowly over the controls, tracing along the metal between the keys, leaving behind faint trails of sweat that had already begun to evaporate in the too-warm, stale air of the cockpit. A smile and bottom-heavy lips parted slightly as he bit down on the tip of his protruding tongue. His smoky brown eyes had long since rolled up and back into his head, the lids fluttering rapidly over the veined sclera. He tilted his head back against the hard head rest of the seat, arcing away from it. The hands twitched, fingers pressing down gently on the practiced commands, shudders rippling down his spine as the machine took action.

His breathing hitched, a hoarse and ragged panting as he strained against the thick nylon cross-belt digging into his chest. Red light danced along the monitors, showing up white on the large screen in front as it slammed through the dull grey plating beneath the machine's feet. The metal went soft on contact, piling up like waves around the perimeter of the blast. He moaned, a deep and throaty note escaping him. One hand returned from the control panel to touch his face, to push uneven bangs up off his sweat-soaked forehead. He left his fingers tangled in his hair, the muscles in his hand and arm contracting as a result of the incapacitating stimulation to his nervous system. His short nails left shallow gouges in his scalp as he hovered on the precipice overlooking the distinction between intense pain and unimaginable pleasure.

But something went wrong in the machine's computations, and Maru opened his mouth in a wordless scream; his eyes coming forward, not seeing the inside of the cockpit filled with overtly familiar hardware. He thrashed against the restraints, biting down violently and feeling his teeth connect on the other side of his tongue. Blood filled his mouth and dribbled down his chin, falling in bright drops to break and run down the dusky skin of his bare chest. He started choking.

A shattering—not of substance, but of a spiritual, a mental, a much more important and irreplaceable origin—ripped through him, shaking him to the core. Oh no. . .not this again. . . The breaking, the taking, the loss of consent. He heard it, felt it, became one with it. It took him, left his body and threw his mind to the ground; trampling, destroying. Synapses exploded from the heavy tension and chemical overload, electricity jumping sporadically from one axon to another. He jerked, writhing from the breathtaking agony, simply beauty of the half-dead psyche. The breaking. . . Oh, God. . . He was breaking again.

His shaky hand slid down with his nails still dug in, clawing at his lids in a vain attempt to close his eyes. Thoughts, the ones that had managed to survive his frayed and dying mind, bubbled up from the darker recesses of his mentality, and he cried out for release. Images of what would happen next flashed before dilated pupils. C-1013 hung in space in front of him, giving the impression that it was a toy, a marionette in the Lord's hand. Blue tainted light rushed through the frigid void toward the colony, hitting the reinforced titanium walls. It shuddered, ripples moving out from the point of impact as the metal liquefied.

The machine's primary weapon turned off and away from the colony's armor plating, shifting in the magnetically jointed hands. Its secondary thrusters flared, vernier clusters on the wing devices spreading open for evasive maneuvers against the new barrage of gunfire from the left. The machine acted on some unknown impulse; perhaps the last tenacious shred of its pilot's extensive training kicking in. It moved upward instinctually, the barrel of the Twin-Buster Rifle following the scurrying movements of the enemy's advancing Mobile Suits. A single command was rooted out of the paralyzed body in the cockpit:

 _Destroy_.

The sound of grinding metal reached his ears, alerting him that the covers of the shoulder-mounted machine cannons were being removed. Red targets spotted the main screen; the proximity alarm screeched overhead. He could feel the temperature rising, could feel the floor of the cockpit being heated even through the soles of his combat boots. The generator was thrumming into overdrive, the energy output suddenly exceeding what the massive structure was designed to handle. He knew what would happen next without the Zero System's intervention, and his eyes became impossibly wide as he helplessly watched the battle unfold.

More shots would erupt from the double gatling guns in the enemy Serpent Custom's black hands. The barrage of bullets would skitter harmlessly off of the machine's armored hull, and Wing Zero would return fire. He imagined that he could feel the vibrations through the metal even before the cannons had gone off, could see the exiting rounds ripping through the opposing metal as though it had never existed. Originally, Wing Zero had been equipped with two 60mm machine cannons, but Maru had changed that, deciding halfway through the rebuilding process that his God needed something more. The 156mm incendiary rounds of depleted uranium that he was currently using could slide through titanium like water, sunk into worked Gundanium with minimal effort, and worked wonders for his Crusades. _Fuck the prophets. Who needs Moses_ —he had jokingly asked Quatre before suiting up for the mission, gesturing to the weaponry— _when I can blow my way through the heart of the Red Sea?_

The Serpent Custom's computers would stall momentarily, the sensory equipment fragmenting and sparking over the malfunction. It would jerk, twisting away from the recoil as its thrusters flared to life, a brief moment when all three thousand kilowatts of the generator's output was converted along the power grid in a violent surge of electricity. The internal systems would be shut down, even life-support for the pilot inside would be cut as the energy traveled back to the generator from the thrusters through the wires, igniting a series of small explosions along the way.

It would last one and a half seconds, the time it took the bullets to enter and exit the Serpent Custom's torso, before the machine burst, orange-red light blindingly bright in the frigid expanse of space. Shrapnel would zoom by, bouncing off of Wing Zero and the colony before spinning away into the void. There was no smoke; the explosion would only be a flash of color in the darkness. No sound, no shockwave. After the light dissipated, there would be nothing, as though neither the Serpent Custom nor its pilot had ever existed. They would have suddenly, horrifyingly, and miraculously achieved true Nothing; they had succeeded in becoming one with the absolute Zero.

But those were hardly Maru's main concern.

His chest rose as if pulled up and forward by an invisible string, straining against the cross-belt until one of them snapped. He could not be certain if it had been him or the machine, but it hurt to breathe, and so he had to stop. The weight of his body seemed somehow exaggerated, crushing him as he was slammed into the cushioned back of his seat. He repeated the action, the erratic steps of a seizure. His eyes remained locked open, staring at the mission timer above the primary control panel, his vision starting to fade in and out as his brain struggled to continue its operations. The lack of oxygen made his head ache, and he longed for the luxury of screaming.

_Outside, shots erupted from the double gatling guns in the Serpent Custom's black hands. The cockpit of Wing Zero shook ominously as the machine returned fire, the whirring and whining of metal vibrating down to him from the shoulder-cannons. Beneath him, the generator screamed, the rubber coating of copper wires melting. Soon, the power grid would face the same fate as one by one the heat from the generator spread throughout the structure._

The temperature was still rising in the cockpit, and cold sweat dripped off his body, soaking the waistband of his old blue jeans. Wave after wave of nausea assaulted him, his intestines winding themselves into knots. A sharp and sudden pain brought bile and acid to his bloody mouth, breaking the spell. It burned the stump of his tongue, and he gagged on it, head dropping reflexively. The warm, viscid liquid splashing into his lap, cloudy yellow-white streaked with red. Gasping, he struggled for breath between wet heaving. Tears stung his brown eyes, and he felt his legs seizing up, a stiff tension rippling through his muscles and settling in the small of his back as a dull and throbbing agony. His hands came down to grip the arm rests on either side of him.

_On the main screen in front of him, the Serpent Custom jerked, pausing slightly in space. It drifted downward, less than half a second passing before it exploded, leaving a bright smear of orange flickering in his vision like a long-dead ghost. The remaining Mobile Suits scattered like leaves on the winds, the pilots turning their machines around and rushing for some far off sanctuary that did not exist._

His own internal systems were shutting down much in the same manner that the Serpent Custom's had, though his malfunction was on the molecular stratum. Electrons were wrenched from orbit around the atoms which constructed his being, and nature's delicate balance was utterly annihilated. The atoms could no longer connect with one another, could no longer maintain bonds to form organs and cells. His body was being ripped to pieces at the smallest level, and all he could do was cry and vomit and pray that God would take him soon.

Everything went black, and Maru's body went limp in the seat. Blood and saliva dripped from his gaping jaw; the light in his eyes dimmed to nothing, and his head rolled forward on his neck brokenly.

Time of death: 23:14, approximately three minutes and seven seconds after mission start.

* * *

 

"Maru! Maru, can you hear me?"

A voice penetrated the darkness, shaking the battered pilot's consciousness back into reality. Slowly, carefully, Maru opened his eyes with a great effort. The bright light of the frigate storage unit flooded his vision, startling him. It was such a radical change from the darkness that he felt any adjustment to it would be impossible; he saw only white, coupled with a few vague colors and abstract shapes. Something pale leaned over him, a halo of gold above an odd smear of blue. The thing—a creature of some sort, he decided, as he felt it grip his shoulders with thin fingers—began to shake him lightly, trying to discern what damage had been done.

"Come on, Maru. . .please answer me!" the voice begged, and only now was the young man able to connect the sound to the hazy image above him. The creature did not fade into clarity; instead, Maru's mind made distinctions in uneven leaps and stumbling steps as cognitive functions in the brain kicked back on. A small, pale mouth, lips pressed together tightly, down-turned with some foreign emotion. What was that emotion? His mind tripped over the feeling, sprawled across uncertainty without understanding. Above the smear of blue were two blond streaks; between them, the light-colored skin was creased, furrowed deeply as if in thought.

Or worry, he realized. The creature, the strange and alien figure with its pale brows and quivering mouth, was worried about him. How strange, he mused, his mind finally giving lines to the shapes. The thing had a face, had a straight nose and high cheek bones. It even had gender and age—was male and young. It—no, _he_ , now—was human.

More accurately, he was Quatre.

It was evident in his eyes when recognition dawned on him, and Quatre sighed in relief, leaning against the wall and allowing the back of his head to thump lightly against the metal. He had been kneeling over Maru when the older boy first came to, but now was seated on the cold floor with one leg drawn up and the other sprawled out in front of him. Wing Zero's cockpit hatch had been left open, and Quatre could see the descent cable hanging down, swaying slightly in the still air. He turned his head, looking up at the machine with a sense of foreboding.

"Are you okay now, Maru?" he asked, staring at where the generator hid in the Gundam's torso. The Operating System alone was enough to drive an average human being crazy—Allah knew it had done just that when he had piloted that metallic demon—but the addition of the old generator was suicide. The ancient casing was eroding quickly, and they both knew that the Mission was getting more dangerous.

". . .I. . ." the older boy tried to begin, but the words caught in his throat painfully. He ripped them out with a sob, tears coming to his brown eyes as his recount of the event rushed back to him. "I didn't mean for it to happen. Oh God, Quatre, I didn't mean for it to happen. I didn't mean to think whatever it was that angered Him, that made Him believe that I was not His devoted servant. It was as if. . .as if He had seen in me some horror, some vile and ugly intention, some deviance towards His Holiness. He treated me in the way that he treated _you_ , but I had felt no evil desire for His purity and beauty, yet He destroyed me as though I had attempted to rape His godhood."

"Quatre!" he implored the Arab to hear him out, to forgive him of these transgressions. "I would never. . . You know that I would never do, or think, or feel any of that! I love Him; He is my Lord and Savior. He is the Salvation; He uplifts my soul and cleanses my imperfections. He leads me away from temptation and sin. He. . ."

Maru faltered, gasping from pain. He squeezed his eyes shut, his mouth opening in a wordless wail. Quatre jumped, surprised. Never in his life had he seen a man cry like that, like a small child whose world had just been destroyed. Maru lay on his back, gasping, crying, and screaming for someone to give him the answer. Quatre could only stare at him in shock. He reached a hand out, laid it gently on his companion's sweat-soaked brow to check for sickness. The skin was cold and clammy, leaving Quatre's fingertips feeling soiled, stained by the blood or perhaps the mind below. Quatre shuddered, pulling his hand back quickly and wiping it off on his pant leg.

The injured pilot coughed, choking momentarily on the emotions that now caught in his throat. Maru swallowed hard, his eyes snapping open and staring up into the light unseeingly. His bottom-heavy lips quivered and his chest rose and fell to a shaky rhythm.

"I can't feel my legs."

"What?" Quatre asked at the sudden confession, looking down to the limbs in discussion. His legs were locked straight, back of his knees touching the floor of the storage unit. Vomit had dried on the fabric of Maru's faded old jeans, collected in the lap with small splatters along his lower stomach, thighs, and knees. It did not look like there was any blood, neither breaks nor tears in fabric or flesh. He touched his companion's leg just above the knee, eyeing Maru's face for a reaction. "Can you feel this?"

"Feel what?" the hysterical tone had drifted away from the pilot's voice, leaving nothing behind. Sweet apathy shaded his words, mocked his ill health and mimicked his blind sight. Quatre took a deep breath through his nose, letting it out as a sigh.

"I'm checking your back," he warned as he reached for Maru's far shoulder and hip. Carefully, he rolled the other pilot onto his stomach, wincing at the pained cry that escaped his companion. Quatre mumbled an apology, one hand feeling along the small of Maru's back. A scream erupted from the older boy as Quatre's fingers pressed against a strange, pale bulge in the dusky skin, nestled close to the spine. The area around the bulge was covered with discolored spots, fanning out from the spine like cancerous wings. It seemed to crawl up Maru's torso, vainly reaching for his strong shoulders only to come up short, barely reaching the middle of his back. The marks had spread out wide, though, snaking out to brush his sides, leaving pale streaks and dots in its wake. Quatre shook his head, swallowing hard as he gently set Maru onto his back once again. "It's getting worse."


End file.
